Survival Skills
by grainia
Summary: How do you get off an alien planet without a spaceship anyway?  Isabelle and Royce try to figure it out and stay alive at the same time.
1. The First Aid

**Survival Skills**

**Disclaimer: Not mine, unfortunately.**

Notes: I intended for it to be from Isabelle's point of view, but Royce is a sneaky devil and got in there at the end.

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How much blood did the average human body contain? Was it 5 or 6 liters? Isabelle couldn't remember at the moment, which was troubling. The fact that she couldn't remember meant that she has lost more blood than she should have. She probably shouldn't have ripped out the jagged projectile the ugly alien had shot into her shoulder, but damn it, it hurt. As soon as she saw the spurt of blood arcing out of the wound following the metal object like it was a magnet she knew she made a mistake. Royce crawled over to her side moments later, after he was finished smashing the hunters head in. They exchanged first names and he collapsed to the left of her on the ground wet ground. She was glad she finally had a name to go with the face. She took a breath and gazed down at him as he tried to get his breathing under control after the hard fought fight he just won. He really was quite beautiful without a shirt on, covered in mud and sweat. She shook her head as the edges of her vision began to darken. What was she doing? A sharp pain in her shoulder reminded her to focus on the issue of bleeding to death rather than the man at her side.

She willed her hands to work as she began to fumble for the QuickClot she kept in one of her large cargo pants pocks. She had been given the cauterizing agent by a corpsman once when she was in the sandbox of Afghanistan on a mission. The corpsmen gave her a brief overview on how to use it as a worst case scenario option. She never even had to pull it out of her pocket before, but losing copious amounts of blood with no medic in sight qualified as a worst case scenario in her opinion. She managed to get the packet out of her pocket with a little wiggling and a large amount of pain. She needed to rip the top open of the square packet, but her left hand didn't seem to want to work right. She was about to rip open with her teeth when she felt a large hand over hers. She looked up and saw Royce peering intently at her torn and bleeding shoulder. She had forgotten about him. Maybe it was only 4 liters of blood.

"Why didn't you say something?" he said roughly as he gently placed the palm of his left hand over the open wound and pressed slow the bleeding he could see from the light of the fire still around them. He received a grunt of pain and tears that sprung to her eyes as an uncomforting reply. Royce kneeled beside her and guided her head to his left shoulder. He leaned her forward so he could get a look at her back. Seeing no evident blood on her shirt he wound his right hand under the collar of her shirt and slid it down across her back. With her forehead in the juncture of his neck and shoulder Isabelle smiled. It would have been romantic the way he was gently caressing her back with his right hand if it wasn't for the pain and that she knew he was only doing it to look for an exit wound. When he was satisfied there was no corresponding wound on her back he pushed her back against the log she had been sitting against and looked at her.

"I don't think it went through." She only nodded. Her vision was beginning to get fuzzy again.

"I'm gonna get a light and have a better look at this." Royce said tilting his head toward her shoulder. He grabbed her right hand and placed beneath his on the wound and pressed. The surge of pain made her grimace, but it helped push some of the fogginess in her vision away. He looked into her eyes and smirked a bit. "You need to take care of yourself for a minute. Okay?" She smiled back and then he was gone out of her vision.

Isabelle tried her best to keep pressure on the wound, but between blood loss and residual effect of the drug Edwin slashed her with, she suspected she did little to staunch the flow. What happen to Edwin anyway? She idly wondered. The last she saw of him Royce was dragging him off toward the hunters' camp. Hopefully the little bastard was dead. She felt a brief surge of guilt at the thought but then shrugged it off. Edwin was not worth her guilt especially since he just tried to kill her. A snapping twig to her right startled her out of her thoughts. She swung her head around in the direction while her hand reached for her gun still lying by her side.

Royce was briskly walking toward checking the light on the barrel of his shotgun. He had placed his vest back on, much to Isabelle's disappointment. If she was going to die she'd rather do it looking at his abs then his vest. He grabbed a branch on his way to her and dropped it at her feet. As he propped up his gun and by extension the light, on the branch so it would aim at her she wondered where he got all the energy from. Here she sat on the damp ground exhausted, gutted and drugged while he looked damn near chipper. She pushed away the childish thoughts as Royce knelt down beside her again and bent his head down toward her shoulder to look at the wound. She dropped her hand as he reached to open the frayed fabric around then wound. A moment later he grunted and pulled out his exceedingly large knife. Isabelle flinched away out of instinct.

"I need to cut the hole in your shirt bigger so I can get a better look." Royce explained when he saw her reaction. He waited for her to nod before he gently slid his survival knife in the hole already created by the impaling metal and tugged. The fabric gave away easily and he put the knife back in the sheath. Keeping his eyes on her shoulder he reached behind him and adjusted the barrel light to better see by. Royce had seen his fair share of bullet holes and knife cuts and as he looked at her shoulder he sighed, it could have been a lot worse. Hearing him sigh, Isabelle looked over at him worried. He raised his head to look at her as he spoke and froze. Their faces were inches apart; she could feel his breath on her face. For a moment he lingered looking into her brown worried eyes before he looked away and sat back on his heels.

"I've got good news and bad news." He said, looking back at here. Isabelle raised an eyebrow in response.

"The good news is I don't think you'll need this." Royce said removing the QuickClot she still held in her left hand and tossed it to the side. She followed the movement with her eyes. "I hate to see the real worst case scenario then." She said softly, mostly to herself. Royce tilted his head in confusion, when he heard her murmur. She shook her head and smiled a small smile.

"You've stopped bleeding so that's good and there doesn't look like anything broke off in there." He continued pointing to her shoulder. "The bad news is I've got nothing good to patch this up with and no pain meds. " He paused for a moment. "Wait a sec."

He stood up and took off the gloves she just realized were still on and began reaching into his pants pockets. She reached for the QuickClot and shoved it back into her pockets hoping she wouldn't have to use it. The movement caused more pain and made her bite her lip. He pulled his neckerchief out of a side pocket and wound it into a rope between his fingers. He knelt down beside her again and Isabelle sat up off the log when she realized what he was going to do with it. Royce wrapped his neckerchief under her arm and around her shoulder to cover the wound as best as he could. He sat back on his heels to inspect his work after he was done. Isabelle leaned back on the log and looked at the work herself, it was obvious he had done something like this before, it was a good job.

Royce stood up and began surveying the scene around him. The fire has lessened a little but it was still enough to see the area around him with ease. There appeared to be no immediate threat, it was just Isabelle and himself now. The thought was both comforting and scary. He was use to doing things alone, everything worked better that way. He was no good at taking care of other people; he needed to get away for awhile.

"There's a lake about half a click away. I'll go get some water." He said turning to point in the direction of the lake they had all fallen into earlier.

Isabelle angled her up head to look at him. She watched him waiver on his feet for a moment. His shoulders were slumped and she began to think the exhaustion she was feeling was sneaking up on him. When he turned back he wouldn't meet her eyes as he bent over to turn off the light on his gun. As his words sank in, the sudden panic that he would leave her alone was just as unexpected as it was just a few hours ago when he said he was leaving. Only she didn't even have that bastard Edwin with her this time.

"Give me a second and I'll come with you." She said as she attempted to push herself up with one arm. She managed to get as far as sitting on top of the log, before she had to stop for a breath. Damn drugs and blood loss, she thought.

"You can barely sit up let alone walk. Stay here." He said to her, again not looking at her. He took a step in the direction of the water when the exhaustion and adrenaline loss made his right knee give away. He caught himself by flinging his arm out to a nearby tree.

"You're not doing much better than I am." He heard Isabelle speak from behind him. She paused for a moment as she watched his back, debating on what to say. "Royce, sit down for awhile and get your strength back, then we'll go." She said.

It was the first time she said his name and it was the way she said it that made him look back at her. However it was the look in her eyes that made him turn around and sit next to her. It was the same look she gave him when he told her to leave Edwin behind. The same look that flashed in his head as he paused in front of the alien spacecraft over an hour ago and made him, cursing under his breath, turn around. He hoped she never figured out how much she could get him to do just so he'd never have to see that look of abandonment and disappointment in her eyes again. He suspected she already knew the power she had over him because she was a female and females knew a lot of ways to manipulate men. She smiled at him as he sat down. It was beautiful smile that reached her eyes and he thought maybe being manipulated by her wouldn't be so bad before he quickly looked away.

He look over at her again as he felt her shift on the log, her face was turned down and away from him as she adjusted the newly appointed bandage. She bit her lip to stifle the pain as she hit a particularly sensitive spot. He reached his left arm around her back and shoulder and stilled her hand. She looked up at him as he reached his other hand up and placed it softly on the bandage in front of the wound and her hand. Startled, Isabelle looked up and into his eyes. Their faces were close again and for a brief moment she wondered what it might be like to kiss him.

"Don't move around or you'll start bleeding again." He ordered sternly and looked away into the woods. The moment broken, Isabelle nodded her head and followed his eyes. She began thinking over all that had happened and she slumped further into Royce's embrace. He tightened his hold on her when he felt her lean closer. They stayed that way wrapped in thoughts and each other sitting on a log for some time.


	2. The Lilith

**Survival Skills: The Lilith **

**Disclaimer: Ahem…My lawyers wish for me to inform everyone that all names and likeness are not mine. They belong to either someone rich (as is the case of Isabelle and Royce) or someone long since lost to history (as is the case for Lilith). I'm just borrowing them anyway.**

Note: I am not prolific writer. It takes me forever to write something and even longer to edit it into something I feel alright in sharing with others. So please be patient with me. I have an image in my head of where these two characters end up it just may take a while for them to get there. Anyway….

They hadn't said a word to each other after leaving the tattered remains of the hunter's camp. Isabelle heard him say something about getting off the planet but so far it looked as if they were headed to the lake. The sun had decided to make an appearance again and while it was not near as hot as it had been the heat of it still made a trickle of sweat run down the back of her neck. Royce still had his arm protectively around her his hand on her hip as they travelled a path created by a small creek which hopefully leads to the lake. Neither one wanted to slide down the side of a hill nor free fall into the water again, which was the only other way they knew how to get there. She looked up at his face from time to time as they limped their way through the jungle. His concentration was always to the forest around them or to the ground below them as they came across a tricky part of landscape. She wasn't sure if he even knew he still had his arm around her.

The brief doze she got on his shoulder while they sat on the log before it started raining cargo containers rejuvenated her a great deal. While she didn't think she'd be able to run a marathon anytime soon, she could probably manage to walk alone. Not that the weight of his hand on her hip bothered her. Quite the contrary, it was comforting. It made her feel warm, like she wasn't alone…and warm. His hand was big and she could feel the heat of it over the layers of clothing she had on. They came to a large log they needed to climb over and she mentally berated herself. She needed to stop thinking like she was in a Jane Austin novel. She was no swooning heroine and Royce definitely wasn't a dashing hero.

The tree that now blocked their path was massive. Isabelle estimated that the radius of it to be at least two meters around as it laid across the stream of water. Dense underbrush on either side creak made going around the log difficult and time consuming. Royce surveyed the log for a moment before he set his shotgun to the side and climbed up to straddle the top. He paused once at the top of the fallen tree to survey the area around them. She looked up at him, her shoulder aching, the light from the bright sun form a sort of halo around his head. He looked like he could pose as a cover model for one of those romance books. He spat dried blood and mucus into the underbrush and instantly ruined the image for her.

He reached down toward the guns and wiggled his fingers in a 'gimme' motion. She handed up weapons with her good arm and he tossed them one by on to the other side taking care not to plop them into small stream of water. He then reached a hand down for her and together they slowly, painfully, inched her to the top. Once she was safely up he swung his leg to the opposite side and hopped down. He reached up and placed his hands on either side of her hips, his head eye level with her belly button and helped her slide down. As her body slid slowly down the length of his lean chest and his earthy smell surrounded her she thought, perhaps, she could understand why heroines swoon from time to time. A moment later as her feet hit the ground fainting from the pain in her shoulder caused by the climbing up and down a log became more of a reality than swooning. Royce heard the hiss of pain that escaped her mouth and looked down at her sweaty face. He gently guided her to sit on the ground with her back against the log away from the stream of water, an echo from a few hours earlier.

"You alright?" He kneeled in front of her pushing an errant strand of dark hair away from her eyes to better see her face.

"Just give me a second." Isabelle said as she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the log. _When was the last time I had something to drink_, she thought to herself. She could feel Royce study her as she told her heart to slow and willed the pain to leave. She opened her eyes when she felt him adjusting the bandage on her shoulder. He looked up and their eyes locked and for a moment she forgot about the pain. He stood up abruptly and scanned the area they were in. He picked up the guns from the ground where they were tossed and placed her rifle barrel up next to her right shoulder.

"I'm gonna scout ahead and see how far the lake is. Stay here. I'll be back." He said quickly and readied weapon. Without pausing for a reply or to look down at her he trudged quickly down the creek in the direction of the lake.

She opened her mouth for a moment, but then closed it again as she watched his back disappear into the jungle. What could she say to him? _Please, don't go. I need you_. Way, way too weak and needy. She was a black ops Israeli sniper for god's sake; she knew how to survive alone for weeks at a time in one hundred times worse conditions. _Wait, I'll come with you. _She wouldn't be able to back up that statement at the moment, she still felt light headed and her shoulder throbbed like hell. So said the only thing she could say, nothing.

Isabelle leaned her head back against the log closed her eyes and felt the jungle around her. The wind stirred the leaves of the trees, the sun danced a tattoo across her face warming it in spots and she felt the stream of water begin to soak into her shoes. All in all it reminded her of her grandmother's garden on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Her safta would tend to the wild flowers there and the place would always smell of jasmine. Isabelle would wander alone for hours soaking in the sun and smelling the air. She could feel the throb in her shoulder lessen as she thought of home.

An animal high in the trees above her screeched out a sound of alarm and Isabelle's eyes snapped open; she instinctively reached for her weapon. She scanned the area around her and tucked her legs under her in a ready position. It could be Royce she tried to tell herself, but she knew deep down it wasn't. She couldn't recall at the moment if the hunters ever made the wildlife around them agitated or not. She stood slowly struggling to keep her rifle at the ready. The alarm of the animal above became faint as if the signaling creature was moving away. She saw nothing in front of her with her quick scan of her bare eyes and a more in-depth scan with her scope reviled nothing.

She heard a steady but faint Tha.. thump off in the distance behind her on the other side of the log. She toyed briefly with the thought of scrambling back up the log to get a better view or making a run for it but decided against it, she was not in the best shape for either. Instead she slid quickly into in a thick bush against the base of a tree next to the stream. If it was another of those hunters the cover would do her little good she knew, but at the moment it was her only option. She squatted down so the bush would completely surround her with the tree to her back and her feet under her ready to move if needed. She dropped her rifle to her side and covered it with some leaves knowing the bulky rifle would not be quick enough to maneuver in her current position and weakened shoulder. She pulled out her side arm checked the ammo, took off the safety and waited.

The thumping sound was getting louder and more creatures in the trees were raising an alarm only to scurrying away. Isabelle closed her eyes for a moment to concentrate on the sound better and began to catalogue. Two, maybe more creatures. Four legs running on the ground. Big. Getting closer. She opened her eyes again and hoped that whatever was charging toward her direction would bypass her. A spider the size of her thumb rappelled from its web and daggled in front of her eyes for a moment before rising back up. Her back itched from the sweat running down it. Her shoulder throbbed in time with her heartbeat. Her legs began to tingle from the position she was in. She didn't move and the sound came louder, closer. _This is what I do, this is what I was trained for_, she thought.

The top of the fallen log exploded into activity. A large moose like creature vaulted to the top followed closely by a slightly smaller version of the same creature. Isabelle estimated the larger of the two to be about 230 kilos. Both had short tan hair covering their bodies and sharp antlers on their heads. The hooves on their feet and the large eyes gave Isabelle the impression theses were herbivores of some kind, a prey creature. The larger of the two snorted a deep guttural sound and leaped to the ground a meter away from Isabelle. The impact of the creature landing sprayed mud and water in all directions and almost made Isabelle fall from her squatting position. The smaller of the two leaped to follow but just as it was about to land an arrow came from above and behind it landing just above the creature's neck in its shoulder. Isabelle watched stunned for a moment as the smaller creature sprinted behind the already running larger creature and disappeared into the thicket, oblivious for the moment of the arrow jutting from its back.

Isabelle looked up and saw a shape descend from the sky and all she could think as she watched the shape sharpen on come into focus as it glided down away from the glare of the sun was 'Lilith'. She, and it was by the logic of Earth a female, reminded Isabelle of the stories her safta told her of the demoness Lilith when she was younger and of the ancient statues from Sumer she saw in museums when she was older. The Lilith had the body of an olive skinned human female from the knees up but had ugly bird like talons instead of feet. She had large feathery and dark wings sprouting from her back that gently guided her to the ground. She wore a loin cloth and a quiver full of arrows on her waist. Her wild mane of dark curly hair fell to her front covering her breast giving the illusion of modesty. She held a bow with a notched arrow in her hands. Isabelle watched her land and loops one finger on her left hand around the front of the bow to secure the arrow and kneel down to touch the spot of ground where the smaller creature had been. She drew her left hand up to her nose and inhaled the scent of the blood that had splattered from the beast and now covered her fingertips. The Lilith looked up from the ground quickly as if sensing Isabelle's presence there and spotted her in the bush. Their eyes locked for a moment and paused for a breath before both females swung their chosen weapons to aim at each other at the same time.

They sat crouched on the ground with deadly weapons aimed at each other for and studied each other. Isabelle was tired, dirty, dehydrated and incredibly hungry and made a decision that later when she told Royce of what had occurred she could not explain. She lowered her weapon. Not so much that she would have trouble defending herself if she needed to but enough so that the pistol did not point at the female in front of her and hopefully would be viewed as a sort of peace treaty.

"I don't want to do this." Isabelle said to the impossible female before her, not expecting a reply.

The Lilith cocked her head to the left and furrowed her brows in confusion. Her hair parted from her face and Isabelle saw her face clearly for the first time. She had a very human face complete with dark brown eyes. It was startling to Isabelle how human she looked, she was beautiful.

"I'm Isabelle, we are not suppose to be here. " She continued hoping the even tone she was trying for would convey her message. Though to be honest she wasn't sure what her message was she just hoped hostilities would not escalate to the point where shots would be traded.

The Lilith began to lower her bow and spoke in a low beautiful language Isabelle could not understand. Surprised, Isabelle was about to tell the other female she did not understand when the Lilith eyes darkened and her head jerked in the direction the beast had fled. The Lilith spoke again, this time however the tone was darker and urgent. The Lilith swung her bow around to the direction she was facing at the same time as her wings unfurled. With a great heave that rustled the leaves around her she shot up into the air. She hovered about four meters in the air her wings fluttering the air around her. Isabelle heard "what the..?" from behind her and looked around the tree in time to see Royce raising his weapon.

"Wait!" Isabelle shouted as she shot up from her squatted position to leap between the two. She raised her arms to shoulder height on either side of her, a movement that caused considerable pain, and spread her fingers out. She caught Royce's eyes and softly said his name. Royce who could have easily shot over Isabelle's head at the flying half-woman paused when he saw the warning in her eyes. He did know what was going on but he trusted Isabelle enough to wait and find out. The creature hovering above them spoke again in the strange darkly smooth language neither human could understand, and flew up disappearing into the trees.

"You mind telling me what that was all about?" Royce said. Isabelle looked up to the trees after the vanished creature and dropped her arms to her side. Her vision blurred for a moment and she quickly looked back down at Royce. His eyes and his gun were still trained up in the direction of where the Lilith last was. The edges around him started to get dark and fuzzy as she watched him search the sky. Her head started swimming as if she was drunk. _Uh oh_, she thought_, I going to pass out_. He started talking again, she saw the movement of his jaw and the muscles in his neck bunch as he swallowed, but it sounded as if he was miles away and she couldn't make out what he said. He looked down back at her and she saw a slight glint of alarm in his eyes as her knees buckled. She felt the ground hit he knees but she managed to mumble out a response to his question before the blackness enveloped her. "Lilith."


	3. The Lake

**Survival Skills: The Lake**

Note: I finally got off my duff and told my writer's block to get bent. Let's see how long it lasts. Oh, and I don't speak Hebrew. I do however have a Hebrew for Dummies and the internet. I hope they haven't failed me.

She felt light as she walked barefoot down the paved road. Buildings loomed over her quite and foreboding. She knew this road, she had been down it thousands of times when she was younger, she was downtown Tel Aviv. However, the road was too wide, the sidewalks too dark and quite. Where was everyone? Tel Aviv is a bustling port and tourist city, this was wrong. A glow shimmering like a fire off in the distance caught her eye. She adjusted the backpack she was wearing headed off towards it like a moth.

After a moment she came to a burning car crackling in the road. The shadows had darkened the buildings and the road into total blackness so that nothing could be seen except the car and the flames. The straps of the back pack dug into her shoulders as she began to move around the car to get a look inside. The heat from the fire made her sticky with sweat and the backpack made her shoulder ache. She was absurdly aware of her barefoot feet on the glass strewn road. She rounded the car as if in slow motion and saw a dark haired woman trapped under the figure. She saw the woman clawing at the road trying to drag herself from the wreckage. She wanted to help the woman, but her feet sudden felt bogged down. Seconds felt like an eternity.

The woman looked up and a familiar face came into Isabelle's view. Her mother reached a bloody broken nailed hand out towards her. "Ha'tsee'lu!" her mother groaned "Isabelle." Inexplicably Isabelle was terrified and rooted to the spot she stood watching the terrible scene unfold. She began to hyperventilate as her broken mother dragged herself from under the car. Isabelle heard a snapped and watched as her mother tore her body away from a leg that was caught horribly in the wreckage. Isabelle watched the now separate appendage curl up in to its self and spurt blood. Isabelle tried to move, tried to scream, as her mother inched closer. A bloody trail followed in her wake as she clawed across the road. Her mother wrapped a torn cold hand around her ankle. "Isabelle. Isabelle!"

"EEMA!" Isabelle jerked awake the word ripping from her throat. Her eyes wild and unseeing as the dream still clutched at her. She sat up instantly catching her shoulder on fire and scanned the area for her mother. Royce's face hovered into her awareness, concern showing in his green eyes.

"Take it easy." He said pushing her back down to the ground with a hand over her good shoulder. The dream still clutched at her mind and her breath came out quick and short.

"Calm down. Take deep breaths." Royce said to her. "Look at me." He took her face into his hands and angled his head into her field of vision. "Look at me." She looked at him. "That's right. Breathe." He wiped a strand of damp hair from her eyes. The dream began to recede as reality began to invade her senses. She could feel the air whooshing in and out of her lungs, the burning in her shoulder and the throb in her head. She could see Royce's eyes crowned with furrowed brows and colored in confusion. She could hear water running and his soft mummer in her ears. She reached up with her good arm and wrapped her hand around the wrist of the hand cradling her face. Her breathing began to slow. Royce, satisfied that she was calming down, tilted her head up a bit and brought a flask to her lips.

"Here, you need to drink." He said, tipping the cool liquid into her mouth. "I think you may have dehydrated. That's why you passed out." The water soothed down her scratchy throat.

"Where are we?" Her voice sounded scratchy to her own ears. She let go of his wrist as he pulled his hand away. She put the flask to her mouth again. He watched her as she took a long pull off the flask and sat back on his heels. She paused for breath and looked up at him. He looked around at the area before he responded. "At the lake." He looked back down at her as she put the empty flask on her stomach, leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

"That's the second time I've had to carry you in under twelve hours." He said referring to when she was drugged. She looked up at him as he stood up and dusted off his hands. "I'm beginning to think you like it." She could have sworn she saw a twinkle of amusement in his eyes before he looked away at the lake.

"Thanks." She said, knowing it was not enough but not knowing what else to say. She put the flask by her side and pushed herself up with her good arm. Royce nodded all traces of amusement gone and began walking down to the lake. She watched him walk away for a moment and then surveyed the area she found herself in. They couldn't stay here for long she knew, the high rocks around them provided too many concealment points for anything looking for them. If what Noland said was true there were only three aliens during a season. Nikolai took care of one, Royce killed another. As they haven't seen or heard anything from either, she could only assume that Hanzo had managed to kill the last alien. She would be a lot more comfortable if she could at least see a body and know for sure. Now what would they do?

She looked over at Royce who had taken off his vest and was currently kneeling next to the water and splashing handfuls of water onto his chest and back washing off the dried mud. She suddenly felt filthy. She pulled herself carefully to her feet and stood for a moment waiting for the dizziness to subside. When it did she walked over the water and sat down next to it. She washed the dirt from her face and hair as best as she could with one arm careful not to let the water drip down upon her wounded shoulder. She didn't know what kind of bacteria might live in it. All the while carefully avoiding looking back towards Royce and his wet chest. Now was not the time to let her hormones go crazy.

"We need to go back to the mining station. I think I saw some first aid stuff there." Royce grumbled. Isabelle looked up at him as he pulled his vest back on. His slip of saying "we" not "I" was not lost to her, but she chose not to comment on it.

"That might be a risk." She said running a hand across her face. "Those hunters know about it now and.."

"I know." He interrupted her. "But there's not a lot options. There's food, clean water and weapons. Right now that's the best option I got." He said with a shrug and turned away.

"Get your stuff together if you're commin." He said collecting his gear from the ground near his feet. She smiled softly to herself, that was more like the Royce she knew.

"Alright. Give me a second." She said. She refilled the flask, drank it all and refilled it again. She stood slowly, dizziness caught her for a moment and receded. The throb in her head had eased a bit and her shoulder was numb, a troubling but welcome sensation. She hoped there wasn't nerve damage. She was adjusting her makeshift bandage as best as she could with one arm as a shadow fell across her. Royce stood tall and slightly damp in front of her his eyes on her shoulder.

"Here." He said gruffly as he passed her rifle to her. She took it without comment. He moved his own gun to hold it with one hand and checked and repositioned the bandage on her shoulder with the other. Isabelle looked away and bit her lip more out of annoyance with the situation then at pain. She was going to slow them down. Though she was against the idea of splitting up she knew at least he would stand a better chance of getting to the station if she wasn't there passing out every few feet or bleeding all over the place. She blinked back tears that suddenly sprung to her eyes. She was a sniper and could track down and kill some of the most dangerous men on Earth, but until recently she always had a partner. She worked better as a team member, but she wasn't on Earth any more. It may be time to expand her skill set. She took a deep breath; this was no time to go soft.

"You should go ahead without me. I'll stay here and rest a bit." She said her eyes on the lake besides her. She was proud at how strong her voice was. He grunted in response. Confused at his response, she looked back up at him. He let his hand drop away from her shoulder and positioned his gun to wield it with both hands again. He looked down at her and she saw amusement filled his eyes again.

"Weren't you the one who said we should stick together?" Royce cocked his head to the side daring her to rebut.

Isabelle was surprised, she expected him to jump at the opportunity to do his solo act. She just got use to the gruff no nonsense Royce. This new smiling Royce confused her, among other feelings she thought best not to dwell upon at the moment.

"Well it's different when I'm the one slowing everyone down." She said trying and failing to stifle the smile creeping its way to her mouth. They stared at each other for a moment, eyes sparkling. He leaned down close, his breath washing across her face and her smile vanished.

"Get your stuff." He said quietly, spun on his heels around and began walking away.

Isabelle blinked, not sure what just happened. A few paces in front of her Royce paused and looked back. She quickly hoisted her gun into the best ready position she could manage and followed. He turned back around toward what Isabelle assumed to be the direction of the mining station, but not before she saw a small smile on his mouth.

"You can tell me all about that flying thing you made me not shoot, while we go."

This was going to be a long walk.


	4. The Hounds

**Survival skills: The Hounds**

Note: A few things. 1. I moved to a new state, started a new school and the internet is iffy here, so this took forever to get out. Sorry about that. 2. I found that I literally squee when it get reviews. I can't help it, I'm so excited it just comes out of my throat. It's embarrassing and awesome. Reviews make me write, so keep'em comin. 3. There are a couple of f-bombs in this one, so watch out. Any mistakes are the ones I missed during editing, sorry. Keep your head down and Enjoy!

It was indeed a long walk. They were both exhausted, beaten, pierced and walking slow. Royce, who was perhaps more beaten than Isabelle at the moment, had begun to favor the right side of his chest. The endorphins having finally worn off after his rather brutal beating by the big alien and all his stubbornness couldn't mask the side effects anymore. She spoke to him in hushed tones about the encounter with the creature she had dubbed Lilith as they made their way through the dense woods. He would turn back to her from time to time when her story telling lagged for too long and asked her seemingly random questions about the event. She began to suspect it was his way of letting him know she was still okay and keeping up on their trek through the woods. She watched the weapon slung across his back bounce with each step as he walked in front of her during a brief lag in the conversation. A thought suddenly occurred.

"I thought you were out of shells." She nodded her head towards the shotgun on his back.

"Yep." Was the only response she received as he navigated a path through the forest. She rolled her eyes and shook her head. It seemed if the topic came close to being about him, Royce suddenly wasn't in the conversation mood.

"Why are you still carrying it around then?" She tried again.

She saw his shoulders tightened in a shrug in front of her as he continued on without comment. She gave up on the line of questioning. Her hand drifted to her side arm and did a mental count of bullets. She should have four left. She pulled the .45 out of the holster and was about to hand it to him when he suddenly responded.

"Figure there might be some ammo at the mining station. Also, I could use it as a makeshift kludge or something if it comes down to it." He said and if he had turned back in that instant he would have seen the wicked gleam light up in her eyes.

"I get it. It's like a baby's blanket, it's more for security purposes at this point." She said seriously, struggling to keep the smile out of her voice and face. He spun on his feet to face her.

"What?...No." The incredulous look on his face made the smile she was forcing back escape. He paused to study her and placed his has hands on his hips.

"You're fuckin with me." He said as he leaned into her space slightly. She raised an eyebrow, still smiling and held her sidearm up to him butt first.

"What's this?" He asked looking down at the proffered weapon.

"It should have at least four rounds left. I would feel a lot better if you had a weapon that could shoot." She said taming the smile that wanted to appear. She waved the .45 to indicate the weapon on his back. "But if you would rather have a b..."

"Don't Start." Royce interrupted with a finger pointed to her face, anger flashing in his eyes. He grabbed the weapon with his other hand and turn back in the direction of the station. "It's not a security blanket." He called over his shoulder as he stomped off. Isabelle had to jog a bit to catch up to him.

"Don't be like that. I was just joking." She saw the anger and tried to cool it down. When she caught up with him he resolutely faced forward, but she could see his lips curling up a miniscule amount. She smiled back up at him and cocked her head to the side.

"You're fuckin with me." His lips curled up a little more. Isabelle was about to comment on his smile when she felt a tingling sensation run up her spine.

After years of battle and training she knew what that feeling meant, she was being watched. Royce stopped slightly in front of her and she could see the muscles in his neck and back tighten. He looked down at her, all traces of a smile gone. He could feel it too. They quickly spun around, back against back, guns at the ready and began scanning the area. Isabelle used her scope trusting Royce to be able to spot anything nearby. They began to circle in a strange sort of dance, backs together, so each could scan the entire area. The trees looming shadows sliced across the ground. The dense green underbrush danced from a scant breeze. She paused as she spotted a creature in her scope 150 meters away. Isabelle took a startled breath recognizing the animal and chambered a round into her rifle. The creature, knowing it was spotted, disappeared behind the dense underbrush before she had the chance to fire.

Royce felt her back tense and heard a round being chambered. He looked off in the direction her gun and scope were pointing, but saw nothing.

"What do you see?" He whispered to her. He turned completely around, standing only inches behind her and slightly to the side. He pointed his new gun in the same direction as hers and hoped he wouldn't have to use the last few rounds.

"It was one of those dogs from before. It just went into cover." She stated, as she scanned the area again hoping to spot it again.

"Just one?" Royce asked mostly to himself. "There should be at least two.' He put his back to hers again and scanned the area. They waited for the attack each was sure was coming. Isabelle's shoulder began to ache from supporting the weight of the firearm. She could feel the heat from his back seep into her.

"Anything?" Royce asked her quietly, a bit frustrated by the wait.

"Nothing." She responded in a whisper, still actively scanning the area. He glanced back to where she had indicated the dog had been, took a deep breath and began carefully moving in that direction.

"Well, I never was one for waiting on an ambush." He grumbled as he passed her.

Isabelle lower her rifle from her eye and followed quietly a few paces behind ready to cover him if needed. They came to the spot where the dog was, the underbrush trampled and unoccupied. Royce locked eyes with hers and she nodded in understanding. He knelt down slowly and began to scour the ground around him. Isabelle remained standing and kept her weapon up,despite the ache in her shoulder. She alternately scanned the woods around them with her scope and her eyes as he worked. He stood up a few moments later and his green eyes met her brown.

"We need to go." He said quietly and quickly. She saw the urgency in his eyes and followed him without question. He set a much faster pace then from before, their aches and fatigue forgotten for the moment. After a few minutes had passed without incident Royce quietly spoke to her over his shoulder.

"They're two of them and they're were following us. At least since the lake."

"Why don't they attack? We're easy targets, especially back at the lake." She wondered.

"I don't know. They're master-less now maybe they won't attack with out command. Or can't" He offered up.

"I doubt that will last long out here." She stated and glanced around nervously.

"My thoughts exactly." He agreed and picked up their pace a bit more. Isabelle didn't complain.

An eternity later, they could see their sanctuary in the distance. A few more meters and they would be out of the woods and in the clearing before the mining station opening. Royce slowed and turned to face her before they were out of the jungle line.

"We.." Was all he got out before they were both struck. Isabelle saw a blur of movement from where Royce just stood and felt herself being slammed from the side at almost the same moment. Instinct took over and she somehow managed to maneuver her weapon across herself and into the dogs open maw as she thudded onto the unforgiving dirt.

The dog and Isabelle were face to face unmoving for a moment. A line of drool dripped on her cheek from the hound's open mouth. The creature growled menacingly and began to shake it's head to try to dislodge the hindering object between it and it's prey. Isabelle gripped the weapon tightly and kept it firmly in it's mouth. Nearby she heard shots ring out. The hound dug one of it paws into her wounded shoulder. She cried out in pain, her grip weakening for a moment giving the creature enough leeway to tear the weapon from her hands.

She was going to die. The thought seemed to slow the world around her and turn everything surreal. The weapon bounced as it hit the ground beside her. Royce would be left alone to be turned into another Nolan, she thought. The beast seemed to slowly turned it's head back in her direction, it's eyes glowing. She never even got the chance to kiss him. The thought angered her enough to shift time and space back into reality. No way was she going to die in this hell hole without a fight. She shoved the hand, not pinned down by the huge paw, up and into the underside of it's lower jaw. She would live though this, she told herself. She grunted with the effort it took to keep the beast from shaking her hand away and bite down on her. She had to live though this. She kicked at it's hind legs hoping to unbalance it. She would not die with out knowing what Royce tasted like.

She felt a sudden wet warmth spread across her chest and splash onto her face, stunning her. The large animal's weight dropped down on her forcing the air out of her lungs. She let out a strangled cry as the creature was rolled off her and tore the hole in her shoulder open again. She watched dazed as the beast fell to the side. It's throat, she could see now, was neatly cut. She felt a hand slide across her hair and she looked up and saw Royce looking down at her worriedly.

"Are you alright? Jesus. I knew they were close, but I didn't... Did it hurt you?" He said in a rush. He stuck his bloody knife into the dirt besides her and started to wipe the hound's blood from her face. His eyes did a quick scan of her body for any obvious signs of injury. It took her a moment to respond to his question her breath having been taken from the pain in her shoulder.

"I'm fine. Just my shoulder." Isabelle said and began to push herself up. He heard her grunt in pain and placed his hands on her back and waist to help her. She folded her legs underneath her and sat back on her heels, hands on her thighs like a geisha. Her head began to swim. She could see the other beast a short distance away laying motionless in the dirt and focused on it in effort to keep from passing out again. Royce positioned himself on his knees in front of her moved the bandage on her shoulder back into place and applied pressure to the area. She hissed in pain, but kept her eyes focused on the dead animal beyond them.

"It's starting to bleed again." He explained. When she didn't respond he followed her gaze to the dead animal for a moment and then back to her face.

"Thanks for the weapon and all, but it's out of bullets." He said with a half smile and nodded to the .45 on the ground. When he still didn't receive a response he lean down into her line of view. "Is?" He said in a mixture of confusion and worry, unaware of the nickname he had just bestowed upon her.

Her eyes snapped to his. He was so close, she could almost feel his breath on her face. Thoughts from moments before when she thought she would die swirled in her head. Almost feeling him suddenly wasn't enough. She later blamed her actions on fatigue and almost dying again. She pushed up onto her knees suddenly and grabbed his vest with one hand, dragging him closer. She closed her mouth on his top lip and tasted it with a flick of her tongue. Then slid her way to his bottom lip giving it the same treatment. She released him as quickly as she grabbed him and sat back on her heels. He knelt on the ground motionless, hand still on her wounded shoulder, eyes wide in surprise. The entire event taking less than two seconds.

She closed her eyes as he stared down at her. He tasted like blood and sweat, maybe that was herself she tasted. Maybe it was both of them. It made sense to her here, in this place, that they should taste like this. She lick her lips to see if she could taste it again.

"Mother of God." She heard him rasped out. She opened her eyes slowly to find him staring at her mouth in awe. He looked up and their eyes met. He reached for her. She was sitting up up to meet him half way just as a large shadow crossed over them followed by a screech.

Royce quickly rolled both of them onto the ground and into nearby bushes, jostling her shoulder as they went. She landed underneath him, her nose in his throat. She looked up at him as he craned his neck to look up at the sky.

"What was that?" She asked from under him, damning whatever it was in her head. He glanced down at her, then back up to scan the sky.

"I don't know and I don't want to know right now." He said and deftly pushed himself up and off her. He held a hand down to her as he stood up and helped her to stand. Once she was up he quickly gathered their weapons and walked back to her, wiping his bloody knife on a paint leg and sheathing it He placed the spent .45 back into it's sheath on her side and slung her rifle around his shoulder next to his shot gun.

"Come on. We're almost there." He said and quickly hustled them away towards the station , a hand on her back. She noticed a limp he didn't have before the attack and a trickle of blood on his pants.

"You're hurt." She said to him pointing to his leg as they quickly made their way across the last few feet to the station.

"We'll fix it when we get inside." He said and quickly stuck his head up into the hole Nolan had escorted them to earlier. He tossed the rifle and shotgun up and climbed into the hole first. He reached a hand down and helped her in. Once they were both in he turned the light in front of his gun on and blocked the hole they had come through. She heard the metal clunk into place and it felt like she was able breathe again.


	5. The Lines Begin to Blur

Note: 1. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the awesome reviews. To quote various smut writers more, more, and more. Heh heh, I kill me. 2. Although I doubt Shakira often reads fan fiction in between world tours, recording projects and Hollywood parties, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that there are a few lyrics of hers in here from a song called Anos Luz. 3. Shakira, if you do read this and like it could you hook me up with some belly dancing lessons. My husband would crap himself if he found out I got lessons from you.

Keep your head down and enjoy!

**Survival Skills: The Lines Begin to Blur**

They transversed the maze like cavern of the mining station in a daze. Neither spoke until they came to an odd area covered floor to ceiling in blood and bits. A pair of boots filled with intact feet remained on the ground. Isabelle would have laughed at the strangeness of it if it weren't so grotesque and if she wasn't so tired. As it was all she could muster was vague curiosity.

"Is that Nolan?"

"I think so." Was Royce's simple response.

They stood silently side by side at the scene for a moment before looking at each other and moving on. Maybe Isabelle could muster some caring for the deceased man after a good long sleep. She doubted it though; she didn't make a habit of caring about people who tried to kill her.

They finally found Nolan's old camp and crawled in through the open hatch. Royce set the weapons to the side of the entrance and covered the hatch with the warped piece of metal that had once fit snugly in the frame. The orange lights were still on and the place smelled of smoke from the fire Nolan had set trying to kill them. However, it was reasonably safe compared to outside and Isabelle began to relax. Royce began to rummage through things looking for anything that may pass for a fist aid kit. Isabelle grabbed a blanket from the indention in the floor that was Nolan's bed and went over to the tub of water in the corner. She filled the flask and downed its contents.

She looked down at her blood soaked jacket and shirt, then looked over at Royce. His back was to her as he bent over the side of a bin. She shrugged, turned her back to him and began to peel her bandage and jacket off. She didn't really care right now if she went full front before him or not. She was covered in dirt and blood, some of the blood her own. She weaved her good arm through the arm hole of her tank top, pushed it up over her head and carefully passed across her wounded shoulder and down her other arm. The wound had stopped bleeding and she wasn't in a hurry to see it start again. She added her gloves and scarf to the growing pile of clothes by her feet, until she stood only in a sports bra, boots and her pants. She shook her hair free of her braid and leaned over the tub and splashed two hands full of water on her face and hair. She turned to grab the blanket on the ground and spotted him staring at her. She wrapped the blanket around her bare shoulders.

"What?" She said defensively and began to wipe away the water from her face with the corner of the blanket

"Nothing." He said quickly and looked down at his hands.

"I, uh, found a first aid kit." He continued on, holding up a small white box. "I can't guarantee there's anything in here that isn't expired, but it's better than nothing. Sit down." He said motioning with the box to a raise portion of the floor. She sat where he indicated without comment and pulled part of the blanket down away from the wound. He opened the box placed it next to her hip and keeled down in front of her. She saw the small wince that formed on his face and remembered she wasn't the only one that was injured.

"You're next." She said determinedly.

"Yeah, yeah." He said dismissively and rifled through the box for a minute before frowning.

"There's no antiseptic stuff in here. Just some gauze, tape, a suture kit and some aspirin."

"I'll take some of that, my shoulder is killing me." She grabbed the pouch of aspirin with her good hand, tore it open with her teeth and dry swallowed the contents. He looked on in amusement and handed her the gauze.

"Here, cover up that hole in your shoulder while I see if I can find something stronger than aspirin before I stitch you up." He got up with a groan and began opening bins.

"What do you mean?" She asked distractedly as she opened the prepackaged gauze in the same manner as the aspirin and placed it on her shoulder.

"I don't know how long a season is, let alone ten, but Nolan might have had enough time hands to figure out how to make something stronger. Here we go." He said as he opened a large barrel shaped container. Curious Isabelle stood up and walked over to him, careful not to let the gauze or blanket fall from her shoulders. She was welcomed by an incredibly strong alcohol odor that burned her nose as she breathed it in.

"Whoa!" She stepped back immediately. "What is that rubbing alcohol?"

Royce smirked and grabbed a cup from the floor.

"They call it moonshine." He said as he scooped a cup full of the concoction and handed it to her.

"Moonshine." She mumbled to herself as she held to offending aromatic mixture away from her face. "You're supposed to drink this stuff?"

"Yep." Royce had already found himself another cup and scooped some alcohol into it. He brought the concoction up to his mouth as if to drink it. Isabelle raised the hand that was holding the cup by the thumb and index finger and placed the other three fingers on his forearm to stop him.

"That's probably not a good idea; this stuff is probably what made Nolan crazy." She slipped her hand away as Royce looked down into his cup and frowned.

"You might be right. Can't even get a good drink on this planet." He sighed and poured the contents back into the tub.

"On the bright side, I think you did just find some antiseptic." She said as she dropped the blanket from her wounded shoulder and removed the gauze. "This is going to hurt." She said as she positioned the cup over her shoulder. He stopped her by grabbing the cup from her hand.

"Yes it is." Royce said gravely. "Lay down." He nodded to the corner of the room with some cloth piled up. She took a breath and went over to the area he indicated. She cracked her neck, which caused more pain in her shoulder and laid down. She positioned the blanket to cover her stomach and legs. She took a few calming breaths and looked over at Royce. He had taken off his gloves and was pouring the alcohol from her cup into his hands to wash them. He refilled both cups and brought both over to her, placing them next to her shoulder. The strong odor wafting by her nose made her cringe; this really was going to hurt. He grabbed the first aid box and filled a cup full of water before he came and sat down beside her, their hips touching.

"I've done this a few times." He said reassuringly. "Sure you don't want a sip?" He said and held a cup of alcohol up to her.

"No thanks. I might change my mind later, though." She smiled up at him. He grinned down at her before turning away and preparing his supplies. He dropped the needle and thread into the second cup of alcohol and opened a few packages of gauze. She watched silently and nervously as he worked. He looked back at her when he was done and placed his left hand on her shoulder, thumb and index finger framing the clotted wound. He held the cup sans needle of alcohol over the wound.

"This will work best if I pour it all in there. Ready?" He asked and waited for her to nod.

Isabelle was accustomed to pain. She had been beaten, stabbed, shot and once even bitten. However, usually after those occurrences she was able to get to a medical treatment facility that had ample supply of numbing or knock out agents at their disposal. She changed her mind almost immediately about not drinking the only numbing agent they had. The burn of the noxious substance into her wound brought tears to her eyes and a curse escaped her mouth. Her breath came out rapidly. Her unencumbered hand flew to Royce's arm that anchored her to the ground and her body instinctively jerked away from the pain. His face blurred from the tears in her eyes but, his eyes never left her face as she writhed on the floor. The burn began to ease; she began to breathe normal again and regained control of her body. She let go of his arm, hoping she hadn't bruised it. He let her shoulder and wiped the tears off her face.

"We're not done, but that was the worst part." He said softly to her. She nodded at him and he shifted his attention to the needle and thread in the cup of alcohol.

"That was fun. You're next right?" She asked him trying to lighten the mood. It worked. He nodded and grinned.

"Yep." He looked back down at her and held the needle up. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be." She looked away as he bent over her.

The pain of the needle followed by the thread into her already tender skin wasn't as bad as she thought it would be, the shock of the alcohol burn having numbed the area a bit. It was, however, bad enough that she began to try to think of other things to distract herself. She had just mentally dissembled her rifle and was trying to remember the lyrics to an old Shakira song when Royce spoke.

"Was that Portuguese?" He pulled the thread though the skin again, ever closer to closing the hole in her shoulder.

"What? When?" She asked distractedly, and then remembered cursing when he poured the alcohol. "Oh, that. Yeah. Sometimes it just slips out."

"Why Portuguese?" He asked clearly trying to distract her from the stitching by talking. She was grateful for it.

"I'm from Brazil."

He paused before he pushed the needle into her skin again and looked up at her in confused.

"I thought you were IDF?" He asked.

"I am. My father met my mother in Israel and when she died he moved us to back Brazil. I spent the summers with my grandmother at her house outside of Tel Aviv. When I was old enough I joined the Tzahal." She explained. He nodded and continued with his work.

"Almost done. How old were you when your mother died?" He asked.

"Four."

"I was eight. You're done." He leaned back and grabbed the cup of water and gauze. She filed that little nugget in the distressingly small area of brain she called Royce info before looked down at her shoulder. The stitches were small, well placed and totaling ten.

"Nice work." She said up to him as he turned back to her. He shrugged the complement away. He wiped away the excess blood from her shoulder with the water dampened gauze and finished by taping the gauze over the stitches. He gathered his supplies got up dropping them in a heap next the alcohol barrel. She sat up slowly, keeping the blanket up over her chest and swung her legs over the ledge of the rise she was on. He walked over and sat next to her as she tested the range of motion the stitches would allow. Once satisfied with the results, she turned and looked at him with smile lighting up her brown eyes.

"You turn." She paused and said. "Now take your pants off."

He looked over at her sharply in surprise. She smiled cheekily at him, stood up and walked to a pile of clothes in the corner.

"You shouldn't say things like that to me. I might get the wrong idea." He said to her back as she grabbed a shirt and smelled it. She smiled at his remark as she decided the shirt didn't smell too bad, dropped the blanket from her shoulders and slipped shirt over head, mindful of the new stitches in her shoulder.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She said to him, not turning around. She heard the rasp of a zipper being lowered and the rustle of clothes being removed. She waited patiently for him to finish.

"I bet." He responded behind her, she heard the sound of boots dropping to the floor and more rustling.

"You can turn around." He said when the rustling stopped.

Suddenly she wasn't sure if she wanted to. Seeing a shirtless Royce had already fired her up, a bottomless one might make the next few minutes interesting. She took a deep breath and her shoulder gave her a sharp sting, reminding her that neither of them was in any shape to make things that interesting. Besides things getting interesting would make things...interesting. Shit, she was tired. She wasn't even making sense to herself any more. She stalled by walking over to the alcohol barrel and filling a cup. She mentally prepared herself for the sight behind her and turned around.

She was grateful and a little disappointed to see Royce had arranged a blanket she was laying on moments before around him so that only the wounded leg was showing. She walked over and squatted in front of him to examine his leg. Two sizable puncture marks marred the otherwise perfect sparsely haired thigh. She placed her hand on an uninjured portion of his thigh for support as she ducked her head down on the side of him to check the underside and sure enough there were matching scrape marks. The animal was able to sink its front teeth in but not the back. Which was a good thing otherwise a large chunk of Royce's thigh would be missing and just a few second alone with it Isabelle had already come to like it. She must very, very tired to be thinking about stuff like that and focused on the task at hand. She righted herself, her hand still unconsciously left on his thigh and looked up at him. He was studying the ceiling intently.

"The back of your leg doesn't look bad, just a few scrapes. The front worries me. I remember from somewhere you're not suppose to stitch up a puncture, and who knows what kind of bacteria that dog might have had in its mouth. How are you're ribs?" She saw the muscle in his jaw tighten and saw him swallow before he responded.

"Ribs? They're fine. Just bruised." He still didn't look down at her. She gingerly stood up to gather the first aid kit. She heard him sigh as her hand left his leg. She looked over at him confusedly and he shrugged at her. She shook her head and continued to collect the needed supplies without a word.

"Okay. I'm just going to clean your leg and bandage it up. Ready?" She said kneeling down in front of him. She braced his leg with one hand and waited for his response, cup poised over the puncture wounds. He looked down at her then smiling softly. He raised his hand and tucked back a strand of curly black hair behind her ear.

"Go ahead." He said quietly. Sometimes she would give just about anything to know what he was thinking. She looked into his eyes as she poured the fiery liquid on his leg and dropped the cup to the side when it was empty and helped the other hand keep his leg still. His thigh tensed in pain. His snapped his eyes shut and the muscle in his jaw flexed as he let out a grunt. His other hand join the one on the back of her head and pulled her forward as he leaned down to place his forehead on hers. Her eyes never left his face. His breathe pushed out rapidly on her face.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She heard herself say over and over. She smoothed a hand down the side of his face, when his leg stilled. His breath evened out and he let his hands slide away from her. Her own hand fell away from his face as she leaned back.

"Okay. You can finish patching me up now doc." He said. She quickly clean the area on his leg, dried it and taped gauze over the puncture wounds. She swiped alcohol dampened gauze over scrapes on the back of his legs, before covering them with gauze as well. She picked up the mess they had made as he put his injured leg back into the pant leg. Once finished they sat side beside each other on the bench like floor raise, facing forward in a daze.

"What do we do now?" Isabelle said with a yawn.

"We sleep."

"And after that?" She responded back and looked over at him. He was bent at the waist, head down. His forearms rested on his knees and his hands dangling in between his legs. He looked as exhausted as she felt.

"In the morning, I'll go out and see if I can get a hold of some of that tech they had. If Nolan can figure out how to use it so can we. Maybe it can help us get out of here." He said tiredly to the floor. She wanted to put her hand on his back and smooth out the tenseness she saw, but she didn't.

"We should stay together. We have no idea what was in those cargo boxes or what kind of traps may still be laying around." She argued.

"Yeah, but you're in no shape to be marching through the woods with me." He countered. She was beginning to get angry; she could take care of herself.

"You're not in any better shape. You got your leg bitten into." She said and he turned his head to look up at her.

"I'm not the one that passed out earlier Is." He said almost gently. All fight left her at the sound of her name on his lips. He was right of course, damn it.

"Alright, fine." She paused for a second considering, if she was going to be stuck here for an indeterminate amount of time then she was going to make herself useful. "I'll do an inventory here and maybe go out later and scout around for a more secure place to stay. I wonder if there are any edible berries here. I guess I could go hunting too." She massaged her undamaged shoulder as she spoke the last part mostly to herself.

"Don't get to comfortable; we're not staying on this planet." He said uncomfortably. She looked down at him; he had a strange look on his face.

"I didn't say we were. You go about the business of get us out of here and I'll go about the business of keeping us alive in the meantime. Deal?" She put her hand out to him. He looked down at the hand and grabbed it.

"Fine. Deal." He said giving her hand a firm shake.

"Good. Now go to bed." She said with a smirk. He pulled her closer with the hand in his grip, until their faces were inches apart.

"Don't get bossy." He said with a mock warning in his tone and let her go leaving her unbalanced. He stood up and walked to the other side of the room and took off his vest. He looked over at her with a satisfied look on his face and laid down. She rolled her eyes at him and pushed some cloth together to form a bed.

"Goodnight, Royce." She said once she had lain down. She heard a grunt in response from the opposite side of the room. She smiled and pulled the blanket over her head to block out the light they purposely left on.

* * *

Hours later Isabelle gave up on trying to sleep. She had managed to sleep for an hour before her dream mother clutching at her ankle again had bolting upright and sending an ache through her should that reach down to her toes. After that she was too strung up to sleep and laid there staring at the dirty ceiling. Royce, however didn't seem to have the same problem as her. She could hear a steady cadence of soft snoring from his side of the room. She stood up, whipping the blanket off and stretched, trying not to pull at the stitches in her shoulder.

She wondered over to the bin Royce had found the first aid kit in earlier and thought she could at least get started on that inventory. Two flash lights, half a pack of cigarettes and mound of cloth later and she was at the bottom. She had her head and her good arm down in the bin, the other arm braced on the outside keeping her from falling in, as she chased something foil covered on the bottom. She had just gotten her fingers around the elusive object when she heard a moan from where Royce slept. She poked her head up out of the bin and looked over to him concerned.

A light sheen of sweat had covered him, his breathe came out shallow and his head thrashed from side to side. His face contorted in fear and pain from the dream that currently gripped him. She dropped the foil object and silently made her way to his side. He had begun to mumble urgently, but she couldn't make out what he was saying.

"Royce." She said aloud hoping to wake him. His muscles tensed, but he didn't waken.

"No." She heard him clearly. She tried waking him again, louder this time.

"ROYCE." When still did not waken she sat down slowly by his side and consider what she should do. She didn't want to startle him as he slept. With a predator like Royce that could be dangerous to her health, still she could just sit here and do nothing. She eased herself down onto her good side facing him and began to speak to softly, in a smooth even tone.

"You're dreaming, Royce. Everything's okay. Shhhh, you're okay." He stilled at her voice and she took it as a good sign. His body was still tense and his face still held fear. She hesitantly placed her hand on his chest over his wildly beating heart. She could feel the tension in his muscles begin to ease and his heart rate slow, as she continued to talk mumble nonsense to him. His breath evened out and began to slow. She felt all the exhaustion from the day catch up with her suddenly, as she lay there breathing with him. She became aware that she was no longer talking to him, she was singing softly. The Shakira song she was trying to remember from earlier dropped out of her mouth as eyes dipped closed. If she were more awake she might have been embarrassed. If she was more awake she wouldn't be singing.

"Ven confia en mi. No hay porque dejar."

She drifted to sleep before she finished.

* * *

She woke up to a loud bang and was instantly on her feet, hands up in a defensive position ready to fight.

"Whoa, whoa!" Royce was across the room fully dress with his has up, palms facing her. "Sorry, the hatch from the door slipped. I was about to leave." He said.

Isabelle let out a breath and dropped her arms to her side, her shoulder only wincing a little.

"You startled me. If you were closer I could have hurt you." She admonished him. He raise an eyebrow at her, cocked his head to the side and stepped closer to her.

"You can't hurt me." He said matter-of-factually. She saw the challenge in his eyes and stepped closer to him.

"I'm IDF, we train in Krav Maga. I'll have you know that I am very good at hand to hand."

"I bet." He stepped again and again until there were just inches between them.

"But you still can't hurt me." He looked down at her, his voice low and dangerous. Unafraid she angled her head up to him.

"We'll have to spar some time once we get home." She saw his eyes dilate as he bent down even closer to her and his hand came up to frame her face. She blinked at his proximity and could feel her heart pounding in her chest.

"You weren't on your side of the room this morning." She could feel his lips move on hers as he rumbled into her mouth. Her eyes fluttered shut and she swallowed the lump in her throat. All she had to do was move her lips and she would be kissing him. Instead words fell out of her mouth in a rush.

"I can't have sex with you." She squeezed her closed eyes together tightly as she the half formed thought from the night before came tumbling out.

"Uh..." He began and she felt him lean back.

"Well, I mean I can. I want to. I just don't think the after math... Well, the consequences wouldn't help and... Shit." She took a breath, gathered her thoughts and continued on. "This is not an ideal place to have a child." He was silent after her admission and she opened her eyes slowly to see if he was even still there. He was still in front of her less than a foot away, hands on his hips, silently watching her with his intense green eyes. She felt heat flare up her neck in embarrassment and she shifted her eyes away from his gaze.

"Say something." She said after a few moments of silence, looking at everything but him.

"I understand." He simply said and turned to the side and grabbed his shotgun leaning on the wall. His response was not what she expected. She stood there silently watching his profile as he checked over his weapon, unsure if she should say something more. Although she wasn't entirely sure what she would say, having never been in a situation like this before.

"I found some .45 ammo and a few 20 gauge shells that should work for this thing." He motioned his head toward the weapon in his arms. He didn't look up from his weapon as continued on.

"I gonna take the .45 if you don't mind." He continued.

"Royce." She said, hoping her would look at her.

"See if you can figure out where the power supply for this place is. It might come in handy." He looked up at the lights mounted to the walls and motioned to them with his hand.

"Royce." She tried to get his attention again and failed again.

"Maybe you can find something better than beans too." He said as he stepped to the hatch.

She gave up and crossed her arms, waiting for him to finish.

"I should be back before night fall." He ducked through the hatch and stepped out into the corridor. A second later he ducked his head back through and looked at her.

"Does that mean if I find a condom out there you'll have sex with me?" He said with laughter in his eyes. He was playing with her again. She smiled and rolled her eyes at him.

"I don't trust a condom that underwent intergalactic space travel." She said laughing a little.

"Damn. Well, guess we'll have to wait 'til we get back." He said jovially, but she could see the question in his eyes. Was she serious about this? She stepped up to him and bent over so her face in front of his. She looked squarely in his eyes and answered him.

"Until we get back." She said firmly and kissed him on the cheek. She pulled back and his eyes burned into hers for a moment. She thought he was going to lean in and kiss her and if he did she doubted she had the conviction to stop him. He smiled suddenly, nodded once and he was gone through the hole. Once alone she covered her eyes with her hand and leaned against the wall. Real smooth Isabelle, she mentally berated herself. That little bumbling speech would have sent a lesser man running for the hills. She took her hand from her eyes and looked at the hole where Royce had just disappeared into. Fortunately for her, Royce was almost too much man that he couldn't be less even if he tried. She smiled to herself and pushed off the wall. She had some planning to do if she was going to keep them alive until he got them off this rock and the first order of business was to find a suitable latrine.

Note: I have to admit I was very, very tempted to end it right after she tells him to take his pants off. Come on, you have to admit it's a great way to end a chapter. Alas, Isabelle and Royce still had things to do.


	6. 2 Underground

Note: 1. This one was tough. I knew where Isabelle and Royce need to go, but I had trouble getting them there. In the end they decided to stay put. I've been bested by my own story. I'll get you next time, fictional characters! 2. I've been reading a lot of Jennifer Crusie lately and I'm afraid it shows. Not that's an entirely bad thing. 3. Review please. Pretty please? Happy Holidays!

**Survival Skills: 2 Underground.**

_Contentment with the past, happiness in the present and hope for the future.*_

Isabelle had completed the inventory of everything they had inherited from Nolan in the first few hours and the results were not very promising. They had a week, maybe two, if they rationed well of food and then they would have to start living off the land. She hated when she had to do that. She did however find Nolan's strange looking weapon. She figured out how to use it fairly quickly. It was just like any other firearm: point at target, squeeze trigger, target goes away. However, she couldn't discern any ammunition entry ports. She decided to give it to Royce later, maybe he could figure it out. She also found toothpaste and a questionable toothbrush. She gave those items a try and found they worked quite well.

She was in the middle of warming up an old MRE for lunch and debating on taking a nap or not when she heard footsteps outside the room she was in. She molded with the shadows around her and reached for Nolan's weapon. She pointed it in the direction of the hatch. She hoped the footfalls belonged to Royce, but she not going to drop her guard until she knew for sure.

The door to the hatch she haphazardly arranged that morning fell open with a bang.

"Is?" Royce said before poking his head through the hole, squinting into the orange gloom of the room

"Over here." She said and stepped out from the shadows, lowering the weapon. He was back much sooner than she expected. Or had she been here alone for that long? He climbed in and dropped a heavy bag on the floor, before turning to right the door behind him.

"Is it night already?" She asked, eying the bag.

"Nope, I decided to have a better look at this stuff in relative safety. It's getting bad out there. I think the animals know the hunters are gone and are starting to come out." He said, still wrestling with the door. She sat down next to the bag, dropping the weapon next to her and opened the bag. She pulled out one of the large masks and began to examine it.

"This isn't the one from the camp, is it?" The mask the alien wore at the camp had a lower jaw bone attach to it. This one was sleeker; almost bird like in its appearance.

"I came across this one first. Looked like the Yakuza and the hunter had a good fight before they finished each other off." He said clearly impressed. He finished with the door and picked up the weapon from beside her.

"His name was Hanzo." She said absently. She studied the mask in silence for a moment longer, before putting it aside and standing. She went over to where she stored the food and picked out two MRE's.

"Where did you find this?" He said looking up from the weapon. She strolled over to him and handed him a package before she replied.

"It was on the other side of what was left of Nolan we walked over yesterday. I saw it when I was hunting down the power source for this place. Which, by the way, I haven't found yet." She said as she opened her package. They sat and prepared their food. She told him her prognosis of food they had and about the toothbrush. He nodded and took his food out to eat. They ate in silence for awhile.

"How's your leg?" He said and she said, "Shoulder good?" at the same time.

They looked over at each other sitting on opposite sides of the floor depression. She smiled at him and her smirked at her. He motioned with his hand for her to go first.

"It's fine. About 60% I'd say." She said. "How's your leg?"

"I'll give it about 80%" He said and finished up his food, packing the empty boxes into the bag they came from. He stood up and walked over to her.

"Let's have a look." He brushed his hands together to get the dirt off them and nodded toward her shoulder. She blinked up at him.

"It's fine. You don't have to..." She started.

"I want to. Now, com'on." He interrupted her again. He had a bad habit of doing that. He waved his hands at her in a hurry up motion and she rolled her eyes. She put her own waste away and stood up in front of him. She pulled the loose shirt she still had on down past her weakened shoulder. She tilted her head out of the way and looked past him as he bent down over her.

"You know it's only fair that I get to look at your leg next, right?" She said after a moment, a small smile slipping from her lips. He pulled the taped down gauze carefully away from the wound.

"You just want me out of my pants again." He said quietly. She heard the smile in his voice when he said this and smiled herself. She decided not to confirm or deny his allegations and remained silent. He looked over at her and said "I thought so. Shoulder looks good." He grabbed new gauze and re-taped it. Once he finished he stepped back and smirked at her and began unbuckling his belt in front of her. She spun around facing the wall and slipped the shirt back up, shaking her head. She heard him chuckle behind her. He was going to make her half-heated celibacy vow hard on her. _Shit, bad choice of words._

"You gonna look at this?" He said and she took that as her cue to turn around. He sat much the same way as her did earlier when she looked at his leg, with a blanket covering the good parts. Except he was half reclined back on his elbows with a gleam in his eyes and a smile on his mouth, looking delicious. She glanced down at his leg and forgot about the carnivorous thoughts invading her head. Blood had saturated the gauze and dried in a maroon spider web curling down his leg.

"Shit, Royce. Did you stop at all today?" She said motioning at his leg and walked over to the moonshine barrel for a cup of cleaning agent. The smile fell off his and he leaned back entirely on his back, looking up at the ceiling. "I told you it's a mess out there. Things should calm down soon though."

She dropped down beside his leg dipped a cloth into the alcohol and began cleaning around the blood soaked gauze. She studied the blood crusted gauze as she did so, making a plan of attack. If she pulled it off in one clean quick motion it might pull off any scabs that had formed over the wound and it would hurt like hell. From the corner of her eye she saw Royce angle himself back up on his elbows looking down at her. Maybe if she dampens the gauze it would loosen up the dried blood making it easier to pull off. She stood up and walked over to the water bucket, setting the blood pinked alcohol cup and dirty rag to the side. She grabbed a cup of clean water, another piece of cloth and knelt back next to him. She felt his eyes on her and she looked up. She knew that look; he was trying to figure something out.

"What?" She said quietly as she rang out the waterlogged cloth and began to dab it on the gauze.

"How did you get here?" He asked here. She looked up at him, a confused smile on her face. "I told you, I woke up in free fall?"

"No, I mean how did you get to where they knew to even grab you?"

_Ah_, she thought to herself, _he wants to know why I'm a killer._ She often wondered herself. Still maybe if she shares a little he'd share a little. She shrugged at him and continued her work.

"I first visited my safta, my grandmother, when I was eight. There was a boy who lived down the street his name was Isaac." She began to pull the edges of the tape away. "He was two years older than me, he seemed huge, but we became friends. We did everything together. Built forts out of sand and sticks, caught lizards." She laughed a little at the memory. "I guess I was a tomboy even back then. I was always so sad to leave safta and Isaac when summer was over. When I was eleven Isaac had to go with his father to Jerusalem on an errand and I begged safta to go with them. She eventually gave in."

"I bet you were able to get your way a lot, with those eyes of yours." He interjected. "Hell, I can barely say no to you. Must've been twice as hard for her." She smiled over at him, aware of a compliment in there somewhere.

"Yes, well. Her and my father always said I had my mother's eyes. Anyway we went into town, picked up what we need to and were on our way back to the truck when a PLO member decided that was a good time to set off a bomb."

The tape on the second puncture mark gauze was giving her trouble. "Four people died."

The tape started to give. "I remember getting thrown and the pain and the smoke, the shouting. I remember wiping blood from my eyes and finding Isaac staring up at me."

She stared working the gauze free. "I knew he couldn't see me though, I knew he could see anything anymore."

His hand covered hers, stilling its movement. She looked down at their hands. "Safta and my father said I was different after that. I became, I don't know," she shrugged "still. My father put me in a Catholic private school in Brazil, but the kids and the nuns...I think they were scared of me." She turned her palm up and he entwined their fingers together.

"I kept going back to Israel despite my father's protest. Safta died and I joined the IDF. I guess I was looking for something, not revenge really, I knew there wouldn't be any for me. The Mossad did find a way to use all that stillness I had. So did the CIA." She looked up at him then. His eyes were filled with understanding and for a second she believed that out of everyone in this whole black universe he was the only one who could. She looked back down at his leg and disentangled their fingers and peeled away the gauze.

"I think I lost some of that stillness anyway. I did miss that shot when Edwin was being chased."

"You got the one that saved my life," she looked up at him, "and you were drugged at the time." He smiled over at her and she smiled back.

"Almost done," she taped down clean gauze over the wound, "then I think I'll hunt down that generator." She finished up and disposed of the medical waste as he put his pants back on behind her. She grabbed Nolan's gun and a flashlight she had found earlier and headed for the closed hatch.

"Here." He said and moved the door out of the frame when he saw her struggling with the door. "You need any help? With the generator, I mean." He asked after they moved the door away.

"No thank you, but you can figure those things out." waving her hand towards the bag on the floor. "Hunting will be a lot easier when we have cloaking technology." She smiled and ducked through the hatchway.

"Is." He called and she turned her head to see him half in the hall half in the room looking up at her seriously. "I'm not gonna leave you here."

She faced him fully. "I know." she said. And she did know, he had the chance to leave once already and he didn't. He wasn't the type of guy to change his mind easily and he had already change his mind once and decided to stay. He wouldn't try again without her. He nodded his head once and ducked back into the room. She turned on the flashlight and began to track down the elusive power source.

* * *

Hours later Isabelle came back to the room victoriously. She found the power source, although she had never seen anything quite like it before. She had spent most of the time she was gone trying to figure it out. After a few hours of the fruitless endeavor she concluded that this was part of Royce's-Get-Them-Off-This-Planet-Business and decided to bring him here to figure it out. Besides she was hungry.

The hatchway was open as she approached. She turned off the flashlight and called out his name much in same manner he did to her hours earlier. She heard him say "Take a look at this," before she climbed through. He was stood in the middle of the room in shirtless with an orange aura from the lights around him. She was fairly certain; however, his chest was not the thing he had wanted her to see, as he was currently waving a bracer clad forearm around.  
"If I flex a certain way then," a blade the size of Europe popped out like a superhero claw, "I get a nasty looking machete." He turned and faced the back wall and said "If I flex this way." The nasty looking machete rocketed off the bracer and ebbed itself into the wall.

"Yeah, I remember that one." She said unconsciously rubbing her shoulder. "Please be careful with that thing, someone could get hurt." Royce walked over to the edged weapon and pulled it from the wall with one hand.

"I will." he said as he reattached the blade to the bracer, "But ya know there's not a whole lot of people around here to hurt at the moment." He walked over to stand in front of her.

"You could hurt me." She took a step to the edge of the floor pit that filled the middle of the room. Royce remained down in the pit so that he they were almost eye level.

"I won't."

"Not on purpose," she crossed her arms and looked down at him, appreciating the rare occurrence. "But you could be doing something, I don't know.." she waved her hand around in the air as she thought, "like pushing some hair behind my ears and you turn your arm the wrong way and the next thing I know I have a meter long blade in my head." She finished with a smile.

"Okay, how bout this?" He said a curl of a smile on his lips. "I just won't have the thing on when I do that." He proceeded to slip the bracer off and it dropped to the floor. He raised the bracer less arm up and slipped a few strands of dark hair away from her face. She struggled to keep from closing her eyes at the sensation and on his face. What this man was able to do to her was profound.

"See. You're still alive." He let his fingers trace down her neck and she tilted her head to the side. She watched his face and he watched his fingers trace the veins under her skin. She swallowed and his lips pressed together.

"Say something. , something that will stop me from wanting to kiss you." He said in a gravely whisper.

"I found the generator." She forced the first words she thought of through her suddenly dry mouth and licked her lips. He closed his eyes as if pained.

"That didn't work."

His hand tangled into her hair and pulled her to him. Their lips crashed together.

How do you describe a kiss, a proper first kiss, adequately?

By taste?

Royce tasted slightly salty with a hint of something sugary.

By sight?

Her eyes closed as soon as she felt him pull her to him.

By sound?

Blood rushed in her ears in a study beat of her heart.

By touch? Oh, by touch.

His lips were warm and slightly chapped as they grasped at hers. His tongue ran along her bottom lip and she opened her mouth to him. Tongues touched and tasted. Isabelle sighed into his mouth, her hands smoothed up his chest to his face and hair. He wrapped his other arm around her waist and she decided there was no adequate way to describe it. A kiss was one of those rare things that had to be felt to be understood.

He broke the kiss and rested his forehead on hers as they caught their breath. His hands slipped to her waist and hers trailed down to his shoulders.

"Okay. Let's go." He said suddenly. He used the hands on her waist to spin her around and shoved her lightly towards the hatch. She turn her head back around and smile confusedly up at him as he followed close behind, hands still on her hips.

"Where are we going?" He let go of her hips and scooped up his discarded vest from the floor.

"You're taking me to the generator, before we do something you'll regret." He paused and looked over at her as she crouched down to go under the hatch. "Unless you wanna do something?"

She smiled a Mona Lisa smile at him and hummed before she ducked through the hole and disappeared through the hole. Damn yes, she wanted to do something. She just couldn't, not yet. She heard him move behind her. "That's not really an answer, ya know." Her laughter filled the halls.

* * *

Royce spent the rest of the day in the bowels of the power generator. She brought their dinner to him. He ate with dirt on his face, silently eying the generator the entire time, as if it would sudden revel its secrets to him. She gathered the wrappers when they were finished and stood to leave him to his project. His fingers on her upper arm turned her head down to look at him.

"Thanks." He simply said his eyes green and warm.

"You're welcome."

He nodded and turned back to the alien generator. Isabelle made her way back down to the hole that was now their temporary home. She thought about going out and trying out the Nolan's firearm, but decided her shoulder wasn't up to it yet. When she came to them, she shoved the feet filled boots further away from the room down the hall, they were beginning to smell. She'd get rid of them in the morning. She straitened up the room. She shook out the blankets. She covered the water and the alcohol. She brushed her teeth and when she had nothing left to do she laid down. She thought about dragging Royce back into the room so he could get some sleep, but he was a grown man and didn't need her telling him it was bed time.

She closed her eyes and thought of the kiss again. The nuns would not be pleased with her having such carnal thoughts about a man she just met a few days ago. She smiled under the blanket, _forget the nuns, _she thought_, they just didn'__t understand how fun a carnal thought could be_. Royce came in through the hatch woke her from her light doze a short while later. His face was sullen as he shoved the door into the frame of the hatch hard. He was in a bad mood. Isabelle watched silently from her makeshift bed as he tore off his vest and boots and lay down without looking over at her. She watched him for a few moments before she turned on her back and let sleep wash over her.

* * *

Isabelle's eyes sprung open and it took her a moment to gauge what it was that had woken her. She slowly looked around the orange tinted room and spotted a familiar figure close to her feet. Royce squatted down with his shotgun up and ready, pointing at the far wall. She quickly glanced over to the wall, but saw nothing.

"Royce?" She asked quietly, pushing herself up slowly and reaching for Nolan's gun. His eyes darted over to her then back to the wall.

"Do you see them?" He asked in a whisper. She scanned the entire room and still saw nothing.

"No.'

"Right there." He pointed with his gun toward the wall, "Behind the trees."

_Trees?_ She looked over at him more carefully. His body was tense but his eyes were glassy and could see something she could not. He was dreaming again, although this time he was acting it out as well. Should she wake him? She suddenly wished she had paid more attention to that psych class she had to take in college. Well, she couldn't have him running around chasing invisible monsters. _At least not while he was asleep,_ she amended. She slowly put her gun away.

"Royce, there's nothing there."

"But..." he stared, still staring at the wall.

"You're sleeping Royce." She slowly put her hand on his shoulder.

"Sleeping?" He looked over at her.

"Yes, sleeping. Now come on you need to get back to bed." She said as she gently pushed the shotgun down with her free hand. He looked down for a second and nodded his head. "Okay." She let go of his shoulder as he shrugged off the strap from the shotgun. She took a deep breath and watched him as she sat back in her bed. He put the shot gun on the floor next to his feet and laid down next to her. Slightly taken aback at this, she looked down at him.

"Are you sure?" He asked his eyes still to the far wall. Sleep still had him. _Well,_ she thought, _this worked last night_. She laid down on her good shoulder beside him and put her hand over his heart. He grabbed it and looked over at her, his eyes glazed and starting to droop.

"Yes I'm sure. There's nothing there." She said and squeezed his hand with hers. He fought to keep his eyes open. _Always a fighter_. "Sleep Royce."

"Isabelle." He whispered, as his eyes shut. He said her full name for the first time and he probably wouldn't remember doing it. She closed her own eyes and fell asleep listening to him breathing.

* * *

She woke up again to a hand pushing her hair behind her ear. Her lips curled into a smile, her remained eyes closed. "You don't have that bracer on, do you?"

"That's what I forgot to take off.'

She chuckled and opened her eyes. She was still on her good side and he had rolled over so that they faced each other. The only thing on them that touched was his hand in her hair. He seemed to like her hair for some reason.

"You're not on your side again."

"Actually I am." She said smiling bigger.

His brow wrinkled in confusion. He lifted his head and looked around the room confirming his position in the room. "How?.." He started, but then a look of recognition crossed his face and he sat up suddenly. "I didn't do anything...ah, well..."

She sat up behind him. "You don't remember anything."

"No, I...uh."

She pushed her hair to one side and shrugged. "You just thought you saw something and then you laid down." She pointed down at the cloth that was the bed.

He got up and grabbed up his shotgun. "I'm sorry; I use to sleepwalk a lot when I was a kid." She watched quietly as he put the gun back over on his side and slipped his vest on. "It's okay." She said.

He focused on his boots as he laced them up. "I thought I was done with that stuff." He said and stood up, head down. "I'll be at the generator if you need me." He was embarrassed. Isabelle was quite certain she had never seen him in such a state. He grabbed some food and removed the door from the hatch.

"How about some lasagna for lunch? My treat." She said trying to ease his discomfort.

He paused bent over, hands on the wall on either side of the hatch and looked over to her for the first time since he sat up. "Yeah. Yeah, that'd be good." and he disappeared through the hole.

* * *

Royce spent the rest of the day at the generator. He came back down briefly after lunch to grab the bag full of hunter gear and was gone like a shadow without a word. She disposed of the remains of Nolan outside and tried out his weapon some distance from the station so as not to draw any unwanted attention. It was surprisingly quite with very little kick, but it weighed a ton. She much preferred her rifle. Royce was right about the planet coming alive; she had seen many creature and strange shapes in the short amount of time she was out. She quickly came back to the hideaway, her shoulder aching terribly from the weight of the weapon. She brought dinner to the generator and was welcomed by face of an alien hunter. She dropped the food startled and instinctively reached for her side arm. Royce quickly pulled the mask off and raised a hand up between them.

"Sorry, sorry. It's me." He apologized. She took a breath picked up the food.

"What are you doing?" She asked.

"I think I almost got this thing figured out." He lifted the mask.

They sat and ate as he pointed out the features of the technology. She sat quietly a listened to his excited drawl. When he was finished he put the mask down and she asked about his leg.

"It's fine."

She lifted an eyebrow at him, "I checked, it's not bleeding" He continued defensively.

"How's the shoulder?"

"It aches. I'm going to go put a new bandage on it right now." She said standing up and picking up their waste. She watched him put the mask back on and she rolled her eyes and smiled at his sudden boyishness before she left.

* * *

She dreamed of her mother that night. They sat in an outside cafe on the streets of Jerusalem Isabelle often patronized sipping tea and speaking in Hebrew as if it was normal mother-daughter get together. Her mother's dark hair flowed in the sunny breeze under the blue canopy.

"_Tell me about him._"

"_Who?_"

"_Isabelle. We don't sit and chat. I'm here for a reason. So spill._" She leaned in and grabbed Isabelle's hand. Isabelle looked into her mother's eyes. They did have the same eyes. She looked away and saw Isaac kicking a ball down the road.

"_I'm dreaming._"

"_Of course you are._" They watched Isaac disappear around a corner chasing after the ball.

They walked through the garden at her father's home in Brazil arm in arm.

"_He's a good man._" Isabelle said.

"_Is he?_" Her mother picked a rose from a bush as they passed.

"_No, but he's good for me._"

They stopped in the wooded path and Isabelle turned to her. "_Does that sound right?_"

"_That sounds perfect._" Her mother responded with a smile.

They sat side by side on a Mediterranean beach at night, the sea licking their toes.

"_I love this place._" her mother said, "_The two of you will have to come here when you get back."_

"_I don't know if we'll get back._" Isabelle said looking over at her mother. The edges of her were beginning to blur and fire started around them.

"_It's time for me to go_." Her mother said standing up.

The pavement dug into Isabelle's feet. Her mother began to fade into the darkness and fire.

"_Mother, wait._"

"_You'll get back. I love you, Isabelle._" She was gone, replaced by burning charred remains of a car and the faint outlines of buildings, as always.

"_Have hope,_ _Isabelle._"

"Is?"

She woke to find Royce looking worriedly down at her, wiping a hand across her face.

"I'm sorry. Did I wake you?" She said closing her eyes trying to hold on the last vestiges of the dream.

"No." He said quietly. "You're crying."

"I am?" Her voice sounding frail to her own ears. He turned his hand and showed her the dampness on it. "Sorry." She mumbled out again and turned onto her good shoulder to hide her face as the tears continued to flow no matter how hard she tried to stop it. Royce laid down on his side to face her and pushed her hair away from her eyes.

"It's okay. Try to sleep. Alright?" He whispered and continued to smooth her hair back. She looked up at him and saw the worry in his eyes. She put her hand on his chest and felt his heart beat. She stretched over the slight distance between them and covered his mouth with her own in a short, sweet thank you kiss which he returned. She laid her head back down on the rag covered floor and closed her eyes.

"We'll get back." She whispered before she drifted off to a broken forgotten dream of soft caresses and warm night beaches.

*I borrowed the quote from an awesome Jennifer Crusie/Bob Mayer book, Agnes and the Hitman. I thought it fit this chapter quite well.


	7. On the Steps of Gods

1. I re-wrote the entire first 3 pages (Royce and Isabelle were horribly out of character, though amusing) and changed the title 4 times (they just plain stunk). It's not important, but I thought I'd just explain why it took so long this time. 2. Thanks for all the reviews! Keep 'em coming. Oh, and anybody want to apply for the position of beta reader. Windows Office is not to be trusted anymore.

**Survival skills: On the Steps of Gods**

Isabelle pushed herself further into the shadow of the rock face and waited. From here she could see out in an almost 180 degree arch and still be comfortable, perfect for her current occupation. The rains that had stared started a week ago had finally hit a lull. The sky however was heavy with gray clouds that could burst at any moment. The bait was set and she knew that it wouldn't take long for a nibble. At least she hoped it wouldn't. This churning mass of water and accompanying waterfall was nothing like cool dark pool she had remembered discovering. She kept one eye on the surrounding trees and another on the homemade bobber floating in the pond and let her mind briefly wonder.

She found this spot the morning after she had the disjointed dreamed of her mother. Royce was gone when she woke up. He wasn't in the generator when she checked and the mask with the broken lower jaw bone attached, as well as a bracer was missing. She concluded that he was off on the planet somewhere going about his business and that she needed to start hers. She grabbed one of the few remaining MRE's, a medium size bag, her rifle and made her way out into the new world determined to find something edible. The hunt for an animal for food was a bust, but she hadn't really expected to be very successful in this foreign jungle. Besides she remembered reading somewhere that in hunter- gather societies most of the food came from the gatherers, not the hunters. So, she spent most of the first part of the day finding the rhythm of this jungle and hoping to find an edible plant. She found a few rabbit looking creatures nibbling on some pinkish berries, but they were off before she could get a shot off. She pulled the berries off and stowed them away in the bag she had tied to her belt and hoped they weren't poisonous, but if the animals thought it was okay to eat she'd give them a try.

She came to a small crick in her wanderings and followed it carefully, knowing if she found it so would other predators. The trees thinned and Isabelle stood in awe for a few moments taking in her surroundings. Below her, the land dropped off abruptly at a 90 degree angle and the stream of water she followed languidly fell down the side. Above her the unfamiliar sky with strange planets loomed ever closer. She wondered, not for the first time, what force kept them from colliding into each other. Before her were the tops of green trees and the slight curve of the horizon. She took a cautious step closer the edge and looked down. The stream fell into a pool of slowly churning water surrounded by trees about 7 to 8 meters below. About another 7 to 8 meters from the edge of the cliff the land dropped off again giving Isabelle the impression of steps. Curious now, she shifted her weapon to her side and squatted down to examine the rock beneath her closer. The angles seemed too perfect to be natural somehow; the rock forming the face of the cliff was perfectly flat with only small cracks marring the surface. She followed the straight line of the rock with her eyes on as it was engulfed by the shadows of trees. Someone or something had cut into this area making these steps. Royce might find this interesting at least. She stood up ready to turn back to the station when she heard a splash below. She pointed her rifle down in time to see a fish swim back below the black surface of water below and the idea to fish occurred to her. She was ashamed she hadn't thought of it earlier, it was a lot easier and safer to sit in one spot then to go trampling through an unknown forest. The pool itself formed a perfect circle that sat in the center of the ledge and touched the edges. Her curiosity got the better of her again and she began to follow the edge looking for a safe route down to the next level.

She gave up hours later. The face of the top step was too smooth and trees that were growing on the next level were either just out of reach or not tall enough to climb down safely. She looked up at the sky and sighed in frustration. The larger of the planets was beginning to block the rays of the star this planet orbited, elongating the shadows. She was tempted to watch how this planet became night, but she knew it wasn't safe. Her shoulder was beginning to ache and her stomach grumbled reminding her that she hadn't eaten since lunch. She tried out a few of the berries in an effort to quite the grumbling, they had a strange taste of orange and strawberries. She decided not to eat anymore just in case they were poisonous, she didn't want to be vomiting out here alone in the bushes, and put them away. She cautiously made her way back to the station, one part of her mind on the forest around her, the other on ways to make rope and a passable fishing kit.

Light spilled into the hallway from the open hatchway when she came to the room they occupied. She remembered closing the hatch and shutting off the lights when she left that morning. Wary and suddenly worried Royce might be hurt or in trouble, she readied her weapon and put her back to the wall. She ducked her head down and back up quickly doing a quick scan of the room. Royce sat with his feet in the pit, his back facing the door.

"You need to work on your stealth. I heard you coming awhile ago." She heard him as she stood in the hallway. She shook her head and smiled a little at herself. Of course he's fine. She ducked under the hole and made her way in.

"I usually have a few kilometers between myself and my target and there's nothing wrong with my stealth." She took the open can of beans he offered up as she passed by him on her way to her bed. "You just have the ears of a dog."

"Are you saying I have ugly ears?"

She put down the can of beans and turned to him. He smirked and took a bite of his own beans and waited for her response.

"You know that's not what I meant." She turned back towards the wall and gently shrugged out of the strap connecting her to her rifle. She smothered a grunt as the movement pulled at the stitches in her shoulder; she didn't remember it being this hard to put on.

"You okay?" She heard Royce asked from behind her. _Dog ears, _she thought.

"I'm fine, just a little tired." She sat down facing him, picked up her can and took a bite. She wasn't fond of beans and she especially wasn't fond of cold beans. She remembered the steps and told Royce about them and about her fishing idea as they ate.

"I just need to find a way down there. At least I know for sure there is at least one fish in that pond. I could try the lake I suppose, this is closer." She shrugged as she finished her story and her beans. She rolled her neck on her shoulders trying to ease the tension from the day away and winced as the movement again pulled the stitches.

"Okay. That's the third time I've heard you grunt." Royce said as he stood up. _It was?_

_"_So, come on let me see."

She didn't argue this time and pulled the shirt away from the wound. He knelt down in front of her, a position that was beginning to get more and more common, and peeled back a corner of the gauze to study her took the opportunity to study his face closer. His nose sat on his face oddly and light scars scattered across his face and neck. He wasn't by any means movie star handsome or pretty boy beautiful. He was rugged and weathered. But his eyes were nice and said things the rest of his face didn't. She struggled to find a word that described him and failed, he was just Royce.

"What?" He said quietly as he looked up at her. She shook her head and looked away.

"Nothing."

"You might wanna take it easy tomorrow. It looks like some of the stitches might rip." He said as he put the gauze back and sat back on his heels in front of her. She looked down at his injured leg and said "How's your leg?"

He stood up and grabbed his empty can of beans. "It's fine."

"Let me have a look." She pulled her shirt back into place and heaved herself up to her feet.

"I said its fine." He said venomously with a flash of fire in his eyes as he looked over at her. Startled at his abrupt shift in mood she froze in place.

He looked down and put the can in the bag that contained all their garbage.

"Sorry." He mumbled out, "Trust me my leg is fine. I've been taking care of myself since I was eight and this was nothing." He waved toward his leg. She eased herself back down.

"What happened to your father?"

"What?" He said, looking over at her sharply.

"Your mother died when you were eight. What about your father? Why didn't he take care of you?" She asked bravely, ignoring his darkening mood. She saw a muscle in his jaw twitch. He took a breath and said "Let's just say he didn't know what to do with me and leave it at that."

He turned his back to her effectively ending the conversation and slid on an alien bracer. "I figured something out about this." Isabelle was tempted to press him further, but decided against it. He was obviously a private man and she felt lucky for any information he was willing to give. _Since when did scraps of information become good enough for me? Probably around the time he sta__rted quoting Hemmingway,_ she thought.

He secured the oversized mask with a string on his head and punched in a few buttons on the bracer. He took on a sudden watery appearance with streaks of lightening running through and then disappeared entirely from her view. She had seen this before, albeit in reverse, but the sight was still awe inspiring. A 'wow' escaped her lips and she stood up slowly, mouth open. She reached a hand out to where he was and felt nothing but air. She scanned the area and saw nothing.

_"_Turn around." She heard a muffled version of Royce's voice and she turned. He shimmered back into existence and took the mask off. Excitement filled her and she smiled a bright full toothed smile at him. He seemed to freeze for a moment and a small answering smile formed. She grabbed the back of his neck and raised herself up on her toes and kissed briefly, full on the mouth. He blinked in surprise. She fell back on her feet and reached for the mask.

"Show me how to do that." She said and he did.

She woke up alone again the next day. They spent half of the nigh with him teaching her how to use the alien technology and the other half was spent trying to figure out how she could wear the necessary gear. Royce was big enough so that the bracer and the mask was just oversized on him, but on her it was like a child wearing adult clothing. The mask fell down over her head and the bracer slipped passed her hand. In the end they managed to rig the bracer to fit snugly over her thigh. The bird like mask she had claimed was secured by a complicated system of cloth and string. If they managed to find a helmet to attach it to the mask would fit much better on her head. The helmet and mask that Nolan had was missing, presumably he had it hid somewhere before he died. She outfitted herself with the alien wear and headed out into the morning light determined to find a suitable fishing pole.

She walked through the jungle cloaked and felt invulnerable in her invisibility. She found a bamboo-like plant near the crick and was in the process of cutting the plant down into a usable portion when she heard the birds above her give an alarm. She quickly slipped into some underbrush, even though she was invisible years of training was hard to ignore. She took her rifle from around her shoulder and brought it to the ready. She watched as the cloaking technology compensated for the length of her rifle and enveloped it in electric water before it vanished. Leaves fell to the ground as the birds overheard, frightened, left their perches. She looked up and saw two creatures silhouetted against the sun, grappling each other in the air and falling. She followed them with her rifle as they hit the ground with a thud and Isabelle immediately recognized the creature on top as the Lilith from days ago. The Lilith was pushed into the air again by the powerful back legs of the creature she was fighting. Unable to unfurl her wings in time she landed on her knees a meter away, one hand on the ground the other pulling out a knife from a sheath on her belt. She looked bloody, battered and pissed. The creature she fought was big, brown and equally as pissed. The creature had bat like wings that started from its thigh and ended at its clawed hands. It stood up on its legs and charged the Lilith with a loud roared. Isabelle took an unconscious step back further into the underbrush at the sound. The Lilith managed to take to the air and get half a meter off the ground before the creature collided with her. The knife was knocked out of her hand as they hit the ground again. They grappled on the forest floor for a moment before the creature wiggled an arm free and slashed across her chest, leaving a ribbon of blood in its wake. The Lilith cried out, pushed away and tried to fly again, but the brown creature tackled her back to the ground. The creature put all its weight down on her and suddenly Isabelle knew she had a choice to make. Let this play out or hopefully make an ally. She lined up her sights and the world slowed. She saw the pain and fright in the Lilith's face. The leaves spun crazily to the ground. The creature open it's razor toothed mouth and slowly bent down towards the exposed neck of the Lilith. Isabelle fired.

Time sped back up as the brown creature fell heavily to its side and hole in neatly placed in its head. The Lilith sat up quickly pushing the remains of the creature off her and looked around startled. She spoke out into the forest in the same musical language Isabelle remembered. Isabelle remained hidden uncertain how the Lilith would react to an uncloaking human. After a minute of the stalemate the Lilith picked up her knife and began to slice the leathery wings off the creature. Isabelle dared to slide closer to watch her work and she stepped on a twig, snapping it. _Damn it Royce, why do you always have to be right_, she thought.

The Lilith swung around quickly and kicked dirt and leaves up into the area Isabelle stood. For a moment the cloak failed as the debris outlined her shape. It compensated quickly and Isabelle was once again hidden, but she knew she had been spotted. The Lilith snarled at her and raised her knife. Isabelle quickly pulled the mask up over head dropping it to the ground, breaking the cloak and released her rifle to raise her hand up between them.

"WAIT, wait. It's me. We've met before." She felt stupid. The rifle hung heavy and awkward on her shoulder. "I'm Isabelle." She put the raised hand in on her chest and waited, hoping she got her message across. The Lilith cocked her head to the side and lowered her knife. Isabelle sighed in relief, she wasn't entirely sure she would have been the victor if they had fought. The Lilith's lips curled upward in what Isabelle would have called a smile in a human, but as it stood she didn't know anything about alien physiology. It could be precursor to a blood duel, or something. The Lilith stepped back and squatted over the creature on the ground facing Isabelle. She then started talking and pointing at the creature.

"I don't understand." Isabelle said and shook her head. The Lilith looked up and sighed in frustration. At least Isabelle hoped it was just frustration. The Lilith quickly sliced away both wings from the body and raised one up to Isabelle. Isabelle warily stepped forward and took it. The Lilith put the other wing up to her mouth and mimed like she was eating it. Isabelle nodded in understanding and said thank you knowing she wouldn't be understood. The Lilith nodded in return and sheathed her knife. She rolled up her wing and shoved it into her belt. Isabelle cringed as the blood from the wing dripped down the Lilith's leg. The Lilith gathered up the remains of the brown creature and rose into the airand left without looking watched her fly away and looked down at the wing weighing down her arms. _I_ _guess this is my thank you gift_. She shrugged, it could be worse. She made it back to the station just before the planets cycled into night armed with a wing dinner, a fishing pole and a really good story to tell Royce.

They roasted the wing over a fire down in a well ventilated cavernous portion the drill of the mining station seemed to stop working. The fire warmed and lit the chamber in a welcoming glow that relaxed both of them. Royce wasn't very surprised by her story.

"I've seen her flying around every once in a while. Hunting, I suppose." He shrugged. "It was just a matter of time before one of us met up with her again." His eyes danced in the firelight. "Figures it had to be you." She sent him a rude gesture and he smiled. The meat tasted like beef jerky. Royce told her about the traps he had set and was planning to set around the station. He also pulled out the net that had ensnared her and the bastard Edwin.

He shrugged at her confused look and said "I figure it could be some good rope to get down to that fishing hole you seem so obsessed with." She smiled at him and thanked him. They spent the rest of the night weaving it into a single line of rope.

Later that night she tossed in her bed of rags and hoped to find a position that didn't make her shoulder ache.

"Can't sleep?" Royce said from his side of the room.

"My shoulder is sore, too much activity today I guess." She raised a hand up. "And before you ask the stitches are fine. I just wish I had a comfortable bed." She dropped her hand and repositioned again.

"I wish I had a rare steak and a sour cream and chives potato." He replied.

"I wish I had a hot bath with mounds of bubbles in it." She played along. She heard movement and turned her head. He walked over to her with a ball of cloth in his hands.

"I wish I had a bottle of beer, a Guinness. Sit up." He said and she did. He stuffed the cloth behind her and gently pushed her back down.

"Better?"

"Yeah." She said because it was true. He looked down at her for a moment. He swept some hair away from her face and she thought he might lean down and kiss her again but he walked back to his own bed.

"When we get back I'll make sure you get a room with comfy bed and a huge tub." He said placing his hands behind his head and closing his eyes.

"I'll call down for room service and have a steak sent up for you." She said and saw him smile in the darkness. She fell asleep thinking of baths and Royce.

The next day Royce insisted on accompanying here to the steps. He said it was to help her carry the rope to her fishing hole, but she suspected it might also have something to do with her encounter with the Lilith. He followed quietly behind her as they walked uncloaked through the trees. His mask hung from his belt, while hers dangled like a backpack from her good shoulder. When they arrived, he dropped the heavy rope to the ground as surveyed the steps the same way she had.

"Nice place." He said and tied the rope to a nearby tree before dropping it down the side. She fastened her new fishing pole to her back along with her rifle and sat at the edge of the stairs. She looked up at Royce as placed the mask over her face. He stood beside her looking at the pool below.

"Do you want to come down?" She asked, the mask muffling her voice.

"No," He shook his head "This is your thing. You sure your shoulder can handle it?"

She moved it back and forth testing it, looking for pain.

"It should be alright."

"Okay." He said and turned around down the direction they had come from, activating his cloak.

"Good talk." She mumbled to herself as she activated her own cloak and climbed down.

It had begun to sprinkle as she tiredly made her way back up the rope several hours later. Going down had been a breeze, coming back up was considerably harder. She had caught three fish and had a better understanding of the pool. She had dipped her homemade meter long fishing pole down into it until she held it by just her fingertips under the water and found no bottom. The sides of the circular pool were smooth and plunged straight down, like a tube. This was definitely created by someone, however the purpose of which Isabelle couldn't begin to fathom. She wondered after she caught her first fish if perhaps the fish were put in the tube of water just to be farmed.

She sat on the top of the steps, her feet dangling over the sides and caught her breath. She felt a sharp electrical jolt in her thigh and almost fell off. She looked down and could see her thigh intermittently appear and disappear in the now familiar electrical watery wave. She glanced around to make sure she was alone before turning off the malfunctioning cloak. _Water must mess with it __somehow. _She filed the information away in her head. She pulled the mask off and tilted her head back to let the rain wash the dirt and sweat away from her face. She got up a few seconds later and headed back to the station.

She had found a fair sized skillet and cooked the fish in it over a fire in the cavern. While she cooked, she was wondered why anyone would have a skillet on them when they were dropped here. But she supposed killers were a strange lot and could have just about anything on them. Royce walked into the cavern, just as she finished the last fish.

"There you are. Come outside." He said to her.

"Why?"

"You've got to see this." He said holding out his hand to her. She looked down at it and then back up at his face. He seemed almost...excited? She put the food down and slipped her hand into his grasp.

"Com'on." He said with a tug and led her up through the tunnels to the outside.

The second she stepped out into the night she gasped. The rain had stopped and the air was alive. Warm lights of blue, red, white and green danced in the sky, filling the air. They coalesced into a bright shimmering ball for a moment only to disperse again.

"I think they're like lighting bugs from back home." Royce said in an awed whisper from next to her, his hand large and warm still clinging to hers. She nodded.

"They remind me a little of fireworks." She in equal quiet reverence, as if talking aloud would scatter the lights away.

"My mom would send me out to catch lightning bugs when my dad got too drunk. I became quite good at it." He said without a hint of bitterness.

She looked at his face lit up in fairy lights and saw no shadows in his eyes. This was a part of his past he had made peace with and she squeezed his hand.

"You should see them when you have the mask on." He said looking down at her.

Her mask sat next to the fire and the now cooling fish.

"I left mine inside."

He dropped her hand and pressed some buttons on his bracer. He slipped around behind her and brought his mask down over her face.

"Can you see them?" He whispered into her ear, his arms bracketing her in pseudo embrace.

"Yes." She whispered back. Sharp and vivid, the sparkling insects danced across her plain of vision. Warm in the embrace of the man behind her, with the sky alive in wonder above her, Isabelle could almost hear her mother whisper to her. "_Have hope_." That night after the fish was eaten and the fire was put out she lay in her bed and looked over to where Royce slept and thought: _Today was a good day._

The rains began in earnest the next day. The pound of the water hitting the metal of the station woke them up that morning. Royce attempted to go out in it, but returned shortly after, dripping wet and cursing. "Can't even see two feet in front of me."

The first few days were spent in relative silence, each person tending to their own tasks. Isabelle improved her fishing line, made a few new hooks and shaved her legs. Royce spent most of his time either in the generators or down in the cavern the drill had made, exploring. By the third day both were beginning to go a little stir crazy. Royce's bad mood had shortened his sentences to monosyllabic grunts and he had begun to avoid her. Isabelle refilled the water barrel and then out of pure boredom, had begun to rearrange and clean their living quarters. She found a beaten old deck of cards and almost wept in joy.

She was playing another round of solitaire when he splashed in dripping wet and carrying a large limp rat looking thing by the tail.

"What is that?" She asked trying to disguise her disgust. He raised the animal a little higher and inspected it second before saying "Dinner?" She was afraid he was going to say that.

She swept the cards back up into a pile and stood up. "Well let's go get it cleaned up then."

He followed her through the hatch. "You find some cards?"

"I did."

"Do they play Spades in Brazil?"

It took both of them to figure out how the best way to clean and cook the animal Royce had caught. He told her he was out answering the call of nature and getting some fresh air when he spotted the animal rooting around the rain pounded mud like a hog, it was an easy kill. As they ate she teased him by saying not to bother with these types of animals anymore because they tasted like garbage. He shrugged his broad shoulders and said "It just needs some salt or pepper or sugar or gravy or anything to cover the taste." She smiled over at him.

Royce explained the rules for the game he called spades. She was just beginning to win a few games when he stood up and yawned. "Time for lights out, I think." She looked up from the cards she was gathering into a pile and glimpsed at his lean stomach as his shirt was pulled up by his over the head arm stretch. She pushed away the urge to brush her fingers across the soft patch of skin and looked up at his face.

"You need to shave. You're beginning to look like a wild man." She told him with a grin. He brought his hand to his face and scratched his beard.

"Maybe I'll trim it down. How 'bout a goatee?" He said kicking off his boots. She cringed.

"Go ahead. Just don't be surprised if you see me hovering over you at night with a razor and shaving cream." She slid off her own boots and stood. She watched in mild surprise as he made himself comfortable on her bed. She walked over to him and looked down at his prone form. "You're on my side."

His arm covered his eyes, but she could see the small smile on whiskered face. "I know how terrible you are at sneaking. I'm giving you a chance to get away with shaving me tonight." She rolled her eyes and laid down next to him.

"I might just surprise you one day. Scoot over."

"You surprise me just about every day." He mumbled sleepily and moved over. She went to sleep with the heat of his body centimeters away, but she woke up, as always, alone. When she saw him next day he was clean shaven.

They next four days were spent much in the same way as that day. One of them would venture out into the blistering rain during the day and seek out an easy meal. Sometimes they were successful sometimes they were not. During the evening they would play cards, sometimes she would win, sometimes she wouldn't. She had begun to teach him Hebrew during the games, mostly just to see how fast he could pick up on the language. He did quite quickly, of course. At night he would plop himself down on her bed and she would half halfheartedly complain about it before lying down next to him. She would always wake up alone.

On the seventh night they laid side by side facing the ceiling, when she noticed that the pound of the rain didn't sound as hard.

"I think the rain is slowing." She spoke quietly into the gloom of the room.

"Yeah."

"I think I'll go down to the steps tomorrow if it stops."

"Okay."

He rolled on his side to face her and she turned her head at the movement. He licked his lips and opened his mouth several times as if he was trying to figure out a way to say something.

"Just say what you're thinking." She said encouragingly. He looked up and met her eyes.

"Be careful."

She smiled and crinkled her brow a little. "I will. Why was that hard to say?" She asked. He answered her question by cupping her jaw and kissing her slowly. It had been a week since she last kissed him and now with his lips caressing hers she wondered how she lasted that long. He ended it much sooner than she would have liked and roll on his back, gently taking left her arm with him. She rolled with the movement until she was on her side facing him. He pulled her closer to him placing her snugly against him. He brought her hand up onto his chest, over his heart. "Because I've never said to anyone before." He said with his eyes closed.

Isabelle was startled out of her memories by a screech of a bird in the trees from this level of the steps. She turned and aimed her rifle in the direction she heard the alarm. She still wasn't quite sure what kind of bird it was always warning her of danger but she was grateful for its sharp eyes. She carefully scanned the area. The bushes in front of her shifted and a four legged beast the size and look of a wild boar stepped out from them. The beast walked over the rushing water and drank. She was surprised this morning when she saw the state of her fishing spot. The creek that led to the steps had turned into a small, but rushing river. The gentle cascade of the creek into the pond below had become a full blown water fall. The pond itself churned with energy and rushed over the side into yet another churning mass of water on the next step. The water on that ledge also fell over the edge. She could only guess that the water continued fall from ledge after ledge like a crazy water park ride. She was almost tempted to find an inner tube and go for a ride.

She watched the boar creature, comfortable behind her alien cloak, deciding the best place to hit it so it would go down quickly. An animal of this size would feed Royce and herself for a week. She hoped the overly large mask on her face wouldn't impede the line of sight on the animal. She took a breath and the world slowed just the way it should. The water slid to a crawl. The whoosh from the waterfall became a muffled background noise. The thirsty animal lapped slowly from the muddy water. The animal staggered from the shot and the world came back to speed. She curse under her breath, she must have just missed the kill shot. She watched the wounded creature stumble closer to the edge of the steps.

"No, no, no, NO." She said as she quickly chambered anther round and lined up her sights again.

"Fuck." It fell over the side. She closed her eyes and slumped her head down onto her rifle. _Great, now what? _She opened her eyes when she felt the jolt in her thigh and watched her rifle shimmered in and out of her view. It had begun to rain again. _Double fuck._ She switched off the cloaking device on her leg and stood, scanning the area with her rifle. Once she was sure she was alone she eased her way through the mud toward the edge to see where the animal had fallen. It lay just next to the other pool of water, its neck at an awkward angle, now clearly dead. She stood on the edge thinking about what she needed to do next, when she heard Royce yell down to her from the top of the steps.

"Is?"

"Over here. I'm glad you're here." She pushed the mask up like a hat onto her head and smiled up at him. He blinked.

"Really? Why's that?"

"Because down on the next level is enough food to keep us fed for a week and you are going to help me bring it up." She yelled up at him and turned to look down the edge.

Her foot slipped in the mud and for a few terrible seconds she thought she was going to fall. Then for a few terrible seconds she did fall. The sky and its strange satellites rolled past her view. She thought she heard an "Isabelle" from far away before the blinding pain in her arm and cold water engulfed her. She tumbled and spun and fell again with new pain hitting her. She tumbled again and again, before water and blackness surrounded her. Then the world shifted.

Authors note: I know there are a few of you out there that may wish to cause me bodily harm right now. Just take a deep breath and know that I've already started on the next chapter.


	8. The Ghost and the Angel

1. SWICH! 2. Not-so-vague references to Hindu gods in this one. If this offends anyone (though I can't even begin to imagine why) sorry, I'll understand if you don't want to read the rest. 3. This was supposed to be a short chapter. Things didn't work out that way, I blame Hemingway. 4. Review (please)! Review (please)! Review (please)!

**Survival skills: The Ghost and the Angel**

The world had shifted and spun off its axes. Royce was vaguely aware that her name had ripped its way from his throat when she fell. He stood for a moment trying to understand what had just happened. He finished resetting all the traps the rain had triggered and he came here to walk with her back to the station. Although he would never admit it to her, the whole Lilith episode had bothered him. What if the she-creature came back and wasn't so benevolent? He didn't see her when he first approached; he turned off his cloak and called out. She stood on the edge smiling up at him in the way that made him want to do crazy things, the fading light hitting her face at an angle. The next moment she was gone, over the edge of the step. The thought snapped him into movement. He picked up the rope and repelled quickly down the side, grateful, once again, to the marines and their training.

Once on the next level he sprinted through the mud to the edge, trying to prepare himself for what might be on the bottom. It would either be a very embarrassed Isabelle smiling up at him, a hurt Isabelle frowning up at him or a d...he stop the last thought in its tracks. He wasn't prepared for what he saw. Nothing. There was a dead animal of some sort off to the side, but no Isabelle. Royce was confused; she didn't have time to walk away. He watched the water in the pool below push itself over the edge and he suddenly knew what had happened. She fell into the water.

The muscle in his jaw tightened as he squinted into the churning mass, but he could see nothing from this vantage point. The water could have pushed her over the other edge or it could have sucked her down into its depths. He cursed out loud, unable to think of what to do next. A bolt of lightning streaked across the sky and the light caught hold of something metal on the edge of the ledge below. Royce glanced to the sides of the ledge he was on hoping for an easy way down, but couldn't find one. He set off at a job, skirting the edge into the trees looking for a way down, the rain poured down on him. A month ago he would have shrugged his shoulders and left, happy in the knowledge he was better off alone. Two weeks ago, he would have gone to the station and waited out the rain before investigating further. Now those weren't options, now he had to find her.

A half an hour later he found a tree that was close enough to jump to and climbed down it. The rain was coming down harder and the daylight was almost gone. He jogged back to the pond following the upright face of the rock. He tried not to think of how small the chances of her still being alive were, and failed. Guilt flooded him; he shouldn't have left her alone.

He found the pond and walked to the edge, again preparing himself for the worst. The metal that had caught his eye earlier came into view in the dying light. It was her mask; he bent down to pick it up and turned the mask in his hands. He saw a small dent on the side, he was sure wasn't there before. His eyes scanned the area looking for more clues. He was an excellent tracker; the marines were impressed by his skills. He could see a set of tracks and it was as if a television turned on in his head and he could see everything in vivid color. The television turned on, but he almost wished it hadn't.

_Isabelle fell and her stomach dropped with the rest of her. The stupid oversized mask slipped forward into her eye, blocking her sight and as a result she was unprepared for the impact. Her head hit the edge of the pool and stars exploded in her eyes, the rest of her fell into the cold water of the pool. She clung to consciousness, as the water pushed her down below the surface. She fought her way, gasping, to the surface. She didn't want to die like this. She always assumed she'd die in messy fire fight somewhere. The water continued to pushed and pull on her until it finally succeeded in removing her dazed form from its presence. The stupid mask caught on a rock as Isabelle was pushed over the edge. It pulled out some hair as she fell down and away from it. She was glad to be rid of the damn thing._

The television turned off. Royce looked over the side of the ledge, but rain and the encroaching darkness made it impossible to see all the way down.

"IS?" He yelled down and waited.

His heart thudded hard in his chest as seconds passed, then minutes. He sometimes hated the images that flooded his mind when he tracked things. However, they were seldom wrong. She had fallen, she fought to stay alive (he was quite proud of her for this) and she then fell again. But that wasn't quite the end of the story, there was more down on the other ledge. Minutes ticked by, he decided not to wait longer. He slung her mask across his back and stalked off down the edge looking for another way down. She was alive when she fell the second time; she was strong and much too hard headed to die. He wasn't one to hope but he found himself doing so any way. Besides, he had to find her; he had a promise to keep.

The trees were too far away on the next ledge to jump to. He began searching the trees on the ledge he was on for vines that might be strong enough to be used as a rope. But the light was gone and he was unable to see anything in the impenetrable darkness. The alien mask hung uselessly from his back. If they were able to do anything beside detect heat, Royce was unable to figure it. He punched a tree in anger and cursed into the rainy night. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. He turned his back to the tree and slid down until he was sitting in the mud between the roots. The rain had soaked through his clothes, his skin was cold and his bones ached. He closed his eyes for a second trying to calm himself and his thoughts drifted to how tonight should have been.

They would have walked back to the station in the rain, side by side, on guard and uncloaked. Once inside, they would have grabbed some dry clothes and he'd take his into the hallway and she would have changed in the room. They'd sling their wet clothes on the line she had set up in the room days before and he'd try not to notice how curly her hair was when it was wet. They'd walk down to the cavern and cook the fish she caught over a fire. She'd tell him about all the adventures she had that day, with that voice of hers that reminded him of late nights in bed. She'd use her hands to illustrate a point and he would watch, getting wrapped up in the story she told.

After he came back from his post-dinner wiz, he would silently stand in the hall by the hatch for a few minutes and listen to her sing softly to herself. He didn't think she was aware that she did that. It would usually be a Spanish or Portuguese song he'd never heard of. Sometimes it would be vaguely familiar song, like something out of a dream. She wasn't the best singer in the world, but he did mind it.

He'd duck in after she was silent for a little while and she would have the deck of cards ready to play. He was going to teach her how to play gin tonight. She would have taught him a few more Hebrew words. It really was a good idea to have a language just between the two of them. Other people could be dropped in at any moment and having a language no one else spoke could keep the two of them alive. How many people spoke Hebrew, ten million or fifteen million at most? In a world with a population issue like Earth that was nothing. He also liked the way she would smile proudly at him when got the words and pronunciation right.

A spider the size of his thumb skittered across his arm, breaking him from his daydream. He flicked it off with his middle finger and huddled further down into the base of the tree waiting for either the rain to ease or the morning light. He flicked two more spiders off him as he waited. He had to get up and walk a few times to keep from falling asleep. No way was he going to get any sleep, he needed to be on guard and be ready for the first rays of light. Besides she was somewhere out there in the rain, hurt and alone. How could he sleep knowing that? Hours pushed by and he let part of his mind wonder, the rest of him focused on the surrounding woods.

Later, after the games, he would stretch across her bed and wait for her retort. He liked to wind her up; she was funny when she was agitated. Not that her really believed she was agitated by this because while she would tell him he needed to get his own bed, she would crawl in next to him anyway and sigh. He would pretend to fall asleep and then he would wait. The next part was his favorite part of the day and he discovered it the first few nights they were here. She would roll into him, soft and warm. Her hand would skim up his side and rest on his chest. She put her lips on his shoulder and he felt her breath on him as she breathed. He tried to stay away at night; he really did, once he discovered this was her preferred sleeping position. For a few nights he was able to, but then she made that crack about his unshaven face and it was all downhill from there, he couldn't stay away. She had made her intentions regarding sex quite clear and he agreed with her reasoning. But it was all he could do not to roll her over and push into until both of them were sweat soaked and satisfied, but he couldn't, not yet. So he made do with her warm breath on his arm and his hand tangled in her hair. He would sleep then and let himself think everything would be alright. He'd made sure he was gone before she woke up in the morning; his desire for her pressed against her side would only serve to make things awkward.

With the first rays of light streaking through the rain he was up and searching again for a way down. He found a healthy vine that was long enough to reach the bottom of the step and hacked it down with the large knife in his vest. He tied it off to a tree and tested its strength. Confidant it would hold him, he dropped it down the side. He ignored his growling stomach and climbed down. He was half way down the vine when his hands slipped on the wet plant and he fell the rest of the way. He landed hard on his right foot and fell backwards into the mud. He blinked up into the sky, stunned for a second, as the rain fell on his face. He sat up slowly and wiggled his ankle and he flinched as pain ran up his leg. _Stupid_, he angrily told himself, _no more mistakes_. He tightened the laces on his boots to keep the swelling down and stood, testing his weight on the foot. It hurt, but he didn't think it was broken, just twisted.

He hobbled to the next pool, where Isabelle may or may not be. He walked with one hand on the face of the steps, taking some of the weight off his injured ankle. He tried not to think of what he would see when he finally got to the area where she fell again, but images of her broken body filtered in anyway. The bushes opened to the pool of water and he didn't immediately see anything that would indicate a tragedy had occurred. Frustration and relief waged a war within him, as he scanned vacant the area. Finally frustration won out and he sighed, the rain had done a wonderful job of covering up the evidence. Not having an Isabelle body, dead or alive, could mean a great deal of things. He spotted her rifle half buried in the mud next to the pool, close to the edge of the step. She was leaving pieces of herself all over the place. He walked over and dug it out and the television in his mind's eye began to play again.

_Isabelle fell again, but this time she was able to prepare for the force of hitting the ground and she put her arms up to protect her already smashed head. She felt the sharp pain of the bone in one of her arms snapping._ Royce cringed at the vision. _She bounced back into the water and she clawed to the surface. The cold water fill her mouth as she tried to swim, one armed, to the side, the water pushing her closer and closer towards the other edge. In a desperate attempt to not be hurled to down again she jammed the butt if her rifle into the mud next to the pool. The weapon held for a moment before it slipped in the mud. The weapon lodged itself on the side of a rock just on the edge she gripped the strap. She gritted her teeth against the pain in her broken arm and the darkness threatening to envelope her from the head wound. She pulled herself closer to the side of the pool and safety, one arm uselessly dangling by her side. The water rushed by her and in the end, the strap to the rifle broke before she did and the water pushed her over the side. Again. _The television turned off.

"Shit, Is." He said to no one and stood. He looked silently over the edge with a blank mind. Once again saw nothing on the next level, resignation filled him and he sigh tiredly. He just wanted this to be over with one way or another. He turned and numbly followed the edge to look for another way down once again. He never got it when people would say they'd follow someone to hell before, but now he understood.

He found another tree with a vine circling it a while later. He climbed up the tree and cut down a portion of the vine long enough to reach. As he climbed down, fire shot down his arm and he almost lost his grip. He was close enough to the ground and he jumped the rest of the way down, jolting his ankle. He looked down at his arm and a spider, the same type he was shooing away the night before, had its fangs buried in his forearm. He slapped it off and cursed as blood welled up from the tiny holes. Intellectually, knew it was probably just a female protecting its eggs or territory or something, but he stepped on it out of malice anyway. He frowned at the tiny bleeding holes in his arm and slapped some mud on it to ease the sting; he didn't have time for this. He picked up the vine and set about climbing down to the next level, forgetting the spider.

He tied the vine around a tree in a slipknot, hoping to use the same vine if he needed to go down another level and made it down without incident. At the bottom, he leaned up against the face of the step for a moment to get his breath back and his vision suddenly blurred. He shook his head to rid himself of the cobwebs in his eyes, but it didn't work. It was like someone held a plastic film over his face. He blamed the disturbing sensation on lack of sleep and hunger and pushed off the face, he needed to get to the pool. His ankle throbbed and his head began to throb in time with it. He stopped several times and wiped a hand across his eyes, in an effort to clear them. The rain had turned into an annoying mist by the time he heard the rush of water from the waterfalls. He felt queasy and weak limbed as he broke through the underbrush beside the pool. Once out from the shadows of the trees the light burned his eyes and his brain. Something was wrong with him, he never had migraines before, and the part of his brain still worked flashed to the spider that bit him. Was that the cause of this sudden affliction? Was he having some kind of reaction to spider venom? His knees gave out and he fell onto them in the mud. He let out a strangled, pained, laugh at the situation. It figured that a small feisty female would be the death of him, there seemed to be a lot of those on this planet.

"You spent the night in the freezing rain, twisted your ankle and got bit be a poisonous spider. I guess I should be flattered." He heard Isabelle say from his left. He jerked his head up and saw nothing but trees. He head was pounding now and tears ran from his aching eyes.

"Is?" The only response came from the water fall nearby. He turned behind him and still saw nothing. He could have sworn he heard her, but now he was beginning to think he either imagined it or was going crazy. He used the face of the steps to push himself up. Death by spider bite and/or insanity would have to wait until after he found out what happened to Isabelle.

He stood at the edge of the pool with his back up against the wall and tried to clear his mind enough to focus. Deep breaths seemed to help. He looked down at the ground surrounding the pool and hoped he could find something that could shed some light on what the next stage of her fall was. He might be having a rough time of it, but he was sure she was having worse. He found a single oddly shaped indention in the mud.

He knelt down in the mud in front of it and tried to focus passed the pain in his head to study it. There were actually three prints very close together, one big print and two smaller. The two smaller seemed to match each other. They seemed familiar somehow, but the pain made his head was slow and the television didn't come on. He sighed in frustration and let himself fall to the side in the mud. _Fucking spider_, he thought, _I wouldn't have had a problem figuring this out two days ago. _He crawled in the mud, unable to find the strength to stand, over to the pool and splashed water onto his face. What was he even doing two days ago? _Sitting with Is, next to a warm fire as she told me about the Lilith. _Lilith? The though made bolt upright and he crawl quickly back to the tracks. He ignored the pain in his head and searched his memory for the she-creature's structure. She had strange and bird like feet, just like these tracks. Pieces of information finally fell into place like a puzzle. He placed his hand in the larger print and the television of events, finally, clicked on in his head.

_She fell again, but this time she landed in the mud by the side of the pool, not the water. Her ankle twisted painfully as she hit and she landed on her back, the breath knocked out of her. She lay in the mud blinking up into the rain as it hit her face. She attempted to sit up, but darkness exploded around the edges of her eyes and she fell back into the mud, a hand dangling in the cold water. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, for just a few minutes, she told herself. But the combination of head trauma and a burn out of adrenaline caught up to her. Later, a shadow fell over her Isabelle's unconscious form. The Lilith gently picked her up and lifted them both into the misty air._

The television turned off and he looked down into the Isabelle shaped hole his hand was still in. She must have laid in the darkness for awhile, alone. His vision blurred even worse than before and his brain burned hotly in his skull. He looked up and saw Isabelle on her knees before him, mirroring his posture, her dark hair flowing like waves around her face. His head ache eased and his eyes focused on her. She smiled crookedly at him and said "I was as alone as you were."

"Is." He leaned forward and reached a hand out to touch her face, but grasped nothing but air. He fell face first into the mud and his head ache came back and his eyes filled with mud. He thought about crying, about sleeping, and about dying right here in the mud. _To die, to sleep: no more,_ lines of Hamlet ran through his head,_ and by sleep we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, 'tis consummation devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream. "_Ay there's the rub." He finished aloud, his face still in the mud.

"Not yet, boy." A male voice spoke above him. Royce frowned and turned his head and saw two booted feet in front of him. He rolled slowly onto his back completely open to attack now, but he couldn't make himself care, which troubled him a bit. The man wore faded jeans and a dirty cut off gray-white tee shirt. His hair was pulled back in a greasy ponytail and his face was home to a crusted black beard. Royce instantly recognized his father.

"You're dead and I'm dreaming." Royce said and turned his head towards the sky.

"It's more like a hallucination." The man nudged him with his foot. "Come on, get up. You've got things to do."

"I never got the chance to say this when you were alive and now seems like a good time: Fuck you." Royce replied. He didn't owe his father anything and if this was a hallucination he'd rather just lay here until the visions were done.

"Good, got it of your chest? Now stand up, you're runnin' out of time." His father said urgently.

Royce looked at the ghost beside him. After his mother died his father crawled into a bottom of a beer bottle and stayed there, indifferent to the fact that he had a son, indifferent to everything. A part of his old man died when she did. This man wasn't his father, but it he was curious. He was reasonably sure Isabelle was safe, might as well see where the vision goes.

"What's going on?" Royce staggered up to his feet.

"I'll tell you on the way." He pointed across the pool. "This way." Royce looked to the other side and wondered how he was supposed to get over the rushing water. He looked back to question his father, but the ghost was gone. Royce rubbed his eyes trying to ease his throbbing head and took a deep breath to quell his uneasy stomach. He had a decision to make either find a way to cross the pool and trust his spectral father or try to track down Isabelle. This was his hallucination after all and he guessed that his subconscious spotted something the rest of him didn't on the other side of the pool. Since the spider had bitten him his tracking skills were sketchy at best, so tracking a flying, Isabelle laden she-creature on a gray cloudy day probably wouldn't have a good outcome. The Lilith had gutted the other creature from Isabelle's story where it landed and there wasn't enough blood on the ground for that to be a possibility in this case. He had to hope that the she-creature didn't want to hurt or eat Isabelle. He always had trouble with hoping, still there was little else he could do right now.

He walked back into the woods and wiggled the vine free from the tree above. On his way back, he barfed and he heard the trees laugh at him. He shook off the oddness and tied the vine to a tree near the pool. He tied the other end to Isabelle's rifle and hoped she would forgive him as he swung it to the other side. It took him a few tries before he was able to snag it on a tree root and was satisfied it would hold. He dangled his legs in the cold water and noticed for the first time that the pool dropped straight down. He secured his weapon and masks as best as he could before he grabbed the vine and roughly made his way across. The water rushing into the pool seemed to want out just as much as he wanted out. It pushed him toward the ledge and if it weren't for the vine he would have went over. He collapsed into the mud on the other side, panting, understanding a little of what Isabelle had gone through. The cool water did seem to ease his headache though.

He stood up and saw his father in the underbrush next to the pool. The older man nodded once at Royce and then nodded towards the trees. Royce stumbled over to Isabelle's rifle and disentangled it before following the man's quiet directions. He followed behind him in a daze for a few minutes before stopping to rest against with his on his arm and his arm on a tree. His brain felt like it was coming out of his ears and his ankle throbbed like hell. The tree he leaned on began to bleed; he jerked back from it and watched the blood spurt from it like an artery.

"It's going to get worse. You need to hurry up." His father said from beside him and turned to walk back into the forest. Royce followed behind him and opened his mouth to ask again what was going on, when his father spoke.

"Do you know why you're here, boy. "

"Yeah, to be hunted." Royce said as he tried to wipe the blurriness from his eyes with the heel of his hand.

"No, I mean here." He motioned to the forest. "Following an old fool."

"It's my hallucination, might as well go with it."

"Well, that's part of it. Tell me about your brunette."

"She's not my brunette and fuck you." Royce interjected. The sound of his father chuckled was covered by the rattle of an AK 47. He ducked into the underbrush, pulled out his weapon and scanned the area, but saw nothing.

"I know you don't believe me, but I really am sorry about everything." He heard his father say, almost sadly. Minutes passed, before Royce decided the gunshots were in his head and stood up. His father motioned for him to follow again.

"So is this some sort of cliché vision quest, where I come to terms with my past?" Royce said mockingly. "Cause, I gotta tell ya, I did that a while ago."

"You always were a little shit, got that from me."

They walked in silence for awhile.

"I know you don't owe me nothing, but do me a favor would ya?" The ghost of his father said without turning around. Royce wanted to tell the man to fuck off, but decided against it.

"What's that?"

"Keep your woman alive." He stopped at the edge of the steps and looked at Royce in the eye.

"Do better than I did."

"She's not my woman." Royce said, not feeling any truth in the words.

"Just promise, okay?" He said and waited for Royce to nod. "You need to climb down here." He said and pointed down. Royce saw where part of the ledge had cracked, making a large crevasse down the side. He could easily climb down the middle of the crack if he wanted to.

"You'll need to climb down two more of these. Then follow the straight edge to the right for awhile." His father said.

"How do...?" Royce turned back to the old man, but he was gone. He dug his fingers into his eyes and sighed. He thought his father was useless when he was growing up, but he'd rather have that version of the man. At least he didn't disappear into thin air; he always knew where he was, right in front of the TV.

He carefully climbed down the crack in the face of the steps. The crack must have started from the very bottom of the steps because it also ran along the flat portion and Royce was able to follow it to the next climbing point. He threw up bile on his way and the trees laughed at him again. He gave them the finger and they laughed louder.

He made his way down the next crack and began walking the path it made.

"Hello, son." Royce froze at the voice. He closed his eyes and wished the newest hallucination would be gone when he opened them again. He slowly unclenched his eyes and saw her standing in front of him. _No, No, No, this wasn't fair._

_"_Mom?"

"Yes, Royce."

His mother stood just as he remembered her, dress in old woodland army fatigues, black hair tied up in a bun, with her cover in her hand. He felt the tears well up in his eyes and tried to fight them back.

"Walk with me while we talk." She said and slipped her arm through his.

"How have you been?"

Royce let out a bark of a laugh and said "I've been better. I got dropped on to an alien planet to be hunted like game. I just saw my dead father and now I'm talking to my dead mother."

"Yes, well. Sorry about all that, but that's not what I meant."

"What do you want me to say?" He was beginning to get angry now. "I was crushed when you died. Dad ignored me and I became a ghost. I've had no steady jobs or relationships. All I'm really good at is killing and that's not something you can put on a resume or tell a date. I'm still just a ghost."

They came to the crack and paused. She turned to stand in front of him and put her hand on his cheek. He closed his eyes and unwanted tears escaped his eyes.

"I'm sorry, son. I didn't want to leave and I sorry about your father. But I don't think you're a ghost anymore. I can see some life coming back to you. I think you'll be fine. I love you." He opened his eyes and she was gone. He sat on the edge of the crack and allowed himself to fall apart. All the grief, anger, and fear from the last few days came out as sobs. He wiped the tears and snot from his face and descended into the next crack, cursing the spider that brought this out.

As soon as he stepped away from the crack a war broke out. Bullets punctured the face of the rock behind him, sending shards everywhere. He belly flopped to the ground and brought Nolan's weapon to arms. The trees merged into a dessert landscape and disappeared. Bullets raced past him and he shot off a few rounds in the direction where they came from. Where was his back up? He belly crawled in the sand, to a large boulder and put his back up against it. He heard yelling and more shots. The new kid, Johnson, crawled next to him behind the boulder.

"THIS WAY, GUNNY!" He yelled past the gunfire and began to crawl away. Something wasn't right, Royce thought as he followed behind the corporal. The younger man in the dessert marine issue gear pointed to a break in the desert floor.

"She's down there, gunny. I'll cover you." Cpl. Johnson said and suddenly Royce remembered.

"Johnson you're dead."

"Yep and you're gonna be too, if you don't get out of here." He said and shot of a spray of bullets and some incoming insurgents. Royce pushed himself in the crack, stopped for a second and looked up

"Thanks Johnson and I'm sorry."

The blonde kid smiled at him said, "No problem, and gunny." and pushed him the rest of the way down.

All seemed quite as he stepped from the bottom of the crack. He looked around saw flat, sparsely vegetated ground and knew he was at the bottom of the steps. He glanced back and up, but couldn't see the top of the steps from here. The rain had started again and he put his hand on the face and began to follow it to the right, just like he was told. His fingers trailed behind him on the wall as he walked, in a daze.

The visions that filled his head came and went along with the waves of pain in his body. His ankle was going numb. Fireflies danced in his eyes and he waved them away. His eyes felt dry in his sockets. An old girlfriend told him he'd never amount to anything and he pushed her blonde head away with one hand. He head throbbed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a blue-gray man sitting in a yoga position on a rock.

He stopped. This vision he didn't understand. The blue man wore animal pelts and had strange paint that looked almost like an eye on his forehead. A trident leaned against the rock he sat on. The area around him and the rock was dry and bathed in sunlight bathed. Royce watched in fascination as a snake wove its way up the man's body and curled itself around his shoulders. He heard birds merrily chirping and a strange sort of peace came over him. Royce was tempted to walk over, out of the rain and sit next to the man. A pretty Indian woman, dry and sunlit, stepped out of the woods next to him. He blinked slowly, his vision clearing slightly and looked at her.

"Who are you?" He asked quietly.

"That is my husband." She said pointing to the man on the rock and then pointed at Royce. "You remind me of him a great deal. Don't worry you are almost done and almost ready to start."

"I don't understand."

"I know, but you will. You need to go now."

Royce looked back at the man. "I don't want to go."

"But you must, she's waiting for you. Go." Royce felt his legs continue to take him down the side of the steps. The woman walked to the man and put a wreath of flowers around his neck. Royce kept the man and woman in his view as long as he could, unable to look away, until the trees blocked his view.

He walked for a few more minutes until the steps sharply turned left in front of him, blocking his dazed forward progression. Exhausted and confused he took his hand away from the steps. He placed it on the new surface and followed it a few seconds before his hand drifted into the air. He looked beyond his out stretched hand and saw that the rock had sharply turned again, away from his hand. He dropped his hand back down and looked forward again, in front of him and saw a large clearing. In the center, a creature with black wings stood next to a fire under a canopy that blocked the rain. The creature seemed to be working on something in front of it. Somewhere behind the pain and exhaustion, his brain told him this creature was familiar and he stepped into the clearing to get a better look. A bird squawked and flew away as he walked closer. The winged creature startled and spun around, reviling a second smaller more familiar figure.

"Royce?"

The sound of her voice brought his memory back to him. His knees gave out, his brain burned and he fell to the ground on his back. Isabelle. It was Isabelle. He hoped it wasn't just another hallucination. He stared up into the gray sky willing his limbs to move, when her worried brown eyes came into view.

"Is? Are you real?" He said, looking up to her beautiful face.

"Of course I'm real." He felt her cold hand on her face. "Shit, you're burning up." She looked away for a moment and spoke to someone he couldn't see. He grabbed her hand from his face, put it on his chest and closed his eyes.

Disjointed darkness followed. Gunfire, screaming then darkness. Cool water spreading down his face and his body, then Darkness. Blood, pain, fear and warm brown eyes telling him to sleep, then darkness. Blue men on rocks and laughing trees, then darkness.

Royce opened his eyes and saw a white rock ceiling. He heard the crackle of a fire and smelled wood burning. He slowly turned his head looked around the small white room he discovered himself in. A fire burned in a hearth with a blackened pot over it. A doorway led out into another white room next to the hearth, one corner held a small pile of hides and their two metal masks. Isabelle's rifle stood upright in another corner. He lay, suspended, in a hammock made of animal skin that was tied off to some bolts in the wall. He sat up slowly and the blanket that covered him slid down his chest. He wondered where he was and why he was only wearing his boxer briefs. The arm where the spider had bit him had a bandage wrapped around it, as did his twisted ankle. He felt a little light headed, but the burning pound in his brain from earlier, was gone. He slowly spun in the hammock and placed his bare feet on the cold stone floor.

He was examining the wrap around his right ankle when Isabelle hobbled into the room with a heavy looking bag in her hand. She stopped in the doorway. They looked up at the same time and paused to study each other. She wore a simple off white formless shift that came down to her mid thighs and had something that looked like a homemade cast on her left arm. She wore her combat boots and peaking out of her left boot looked like the same type of bandage on his own ankle. An ugly black eye and a cut on her temple graced her face. He drank her in.

"You look beautiful." He said what he was thinking. "Come here." He reached a hand out to her. She rolled her eyes and dropped the bag, with a thud, next to the fire.

"You're still out of it." She said and began to rummage through the bag. "Are you hungry?"

He wrinkled his brow in confusion and dropped his hand. How long was he 'out of it' and what had he been doing?

"I feel fine. How long have I been here and where's here?"

She looked up from the bag at him. She took a moment to assess him, then straightened and said, "Well, you're making sense now, at least. I think this is some kind of ancient temple. There are some reliefs on the wall that look like they might be gods. How did you find me?"

She took a hesitant step closer to him, but still keeping out of arms reach.

"It's a long story." He attempted to stand, but sat back down when he felt pins and needles in his sleeping legs. She took another step closer, with a hand out when she saw him try to stand, but stopped just short of him as he sat back down. Why was she hesitating? _Keep her talking_, he thought.

"I'll tell you about it later. What's that?" He pointed to the cast on her arm and she relaxed a little.

"The Lilith. I think she's a native to this world. Some of the reliefs on the walls show people like her. She made this for me and gave me something to put on your arm." She raised up her arm and drifted closer to him.

"How long have I been out?"

"Two days. What happened to your arm? It looked bad." She took another step and when she was within range he reached out, taking her good hand. He slowly, very slowly, like he was calming a wild animal pulled her forward into the vee of his open legs. He kept his eyes on her face, looking for any sign that she would bolt. She looked indecisive and a little frightened, but she came willingly to him. He wove both of his arms between her arms, around her waist and nestled his head into her stomach just under her breast. She stood in his arms stiff as a board and again he wondered what had occurred in the past two days to make her react this way. He should let her go and ask her what was wrong and he would, in a minute. Right now he was enjoying her warm, soft and alive stomach on his face too much.

"Thanks." He mumbled out, not entirely sure what he was thanking her for. The muscles in her back and waist began to relax. He felt her fingers of her right hand ghost the top of head.

"For what?" She said and he shrugged.

"For not being dead."

"Your welcome," she said and he felt her fingers more firmly in his hair, "and thank you."

He turned his head and looked up at her between the valley of her breast.

"For what?" He mimicked her and she mimicked him with a shrug.

"For finding me. I didn't think you would or could."

He sat back a little, keeping her in the circle of his arms. "I had to, I made a promise."

He sat up straighter and slid his hands to either side of her hips, giving her space to move away if she wanted to. She stood where she was and studied his eyes. Apparently satisfied with what she saw, she leaned into him. The hand on his head traveled down to his whiskered face.

"What promise?" She asked, her eyes followed her fingers as they paused on his lips. She drove him crazy. He wanted to lean up and kiss her so bad he could almost taste her. The last thing he wanted was to spook her though. He'd wait, he was a patient man. The ball was in her court. He stilled his thumbs which had begun to make circles on her hip bone.

"The one where I said I wouldn't leave you."

She looked up from his lips to his eyes in surprise. Her mouth open as if to speak, but instead she shook her head and pushed her lips onto his. He had been told many times that he was terrible at verbalizing his emotions, mostly by ex girlfriends, so he decided not to even try. He showed her instead. He kissed her fiercely, putting every bit of pent up frustration, anger, and loss from the previous days into it. He closed his eyes and focused on her entirely, to catalogue the moment, just in case they were separated again. The slight cinnamon taste of her mouth. The way her hair felt soft in his hand, as his fingers wove through it. The way her tongue moved against his, taking everything he was giving and wanting more. She moaned and swung a knee up into the hammock, then the other, until she was straddling him. He felt her settle in his lap and the hammock swayed under them. The world finally shifted and spun back onto its axes.

Authors note: Shit, I almost made myself cry writing parts of this thing. Super cathartic.


	9. Unseen Scars

Note: 1. SWITCH! 2. Sorry about the wait. Real life reared its ugly head, and then a writer's block so intense grabbed me and put me into a submission hold. I almost tapped out. 3. Again this was supposed to be Isabelle only pov, but damned if Royce didn't sneak in there a few times. Oh, well. Hope it is worth the wait.

**Survival Skills: Unseen Scars**

Isabelle was having a lousy few days. First, there was the fall. She was lucky enough not to remember most of it, but from all the cuts, bruises and broken bones that now scattered her body, it must have been epic. Then she woke up to a splitting headache, an aching body and to see the Lilith standing over her. She scrambled to her feet, promptly vomited. She then discovered she most likely had a concussion and that her side arm was missing. After spitting the bile from her mouth the two females studied each other for a few tense minutes. The Lilith extended a bowl to her and motioned for her to sit down on a dry blanket under an awning. Isabelle's head spun, her body ached and she did the only thing she could think of. She sat down. Isabelle was sitting attempting to still the spinning in her head while the Lilith worked to put a primitive cast on her obviously broken arm, when Royce stumbled from the tree line. When he dropped like a stone to the ground things got even lousier.

So, when she felt him hot and hard on her stomach and his thighs between her legs, things were definitely looking up. That is until he swept a hand across the dark bruise on her hip. He murmured an apology against her mouth and moved his hand away at her flinch, so she was willing to forgive him. Then, in an attempt to get closer to him, her cast hit his wounded arm. They both cringed from the shock pain, but somehow managed to continue the kiss. It wasn't until his stomach growled did she give up and pull away. Her good hand slid down to his chest and she pushed back. His eyes were closed and suddenly her mind flashed back to the mud and rain two days ago. The weak and powerless feeling engulfed her again as it did when she knelt next to his still form on the ground. He opened his eyes, breaking her from the past and sudden irrational anger filled her. Anger at herself for remembering the pain of that day and anger at him for making her feel it. She gave his shoulder a sharp jab and roughly disentangled herself from his lap.

"Wha?" He rubbed his shoulder confused by her sudden outburst of violence.

She stood in front of him with hands on her hips and fire in her eyes.

"That was for passing out and scaring the crap out of me." She said and the anger fled as quickly as it arrived. Embarrassed by her unwarranted action she turned to the pot of food she was preparing earlier.

"Was that the only reason?" He asked from behind her. Confused, she gave a quick stir to the concoction in the pot and turned back to him.

"That's not good enough?"

"You tell me?" He stood up slowly.

Answering a question with a question. She wondered if he was still under the influence of the delirium that held him since he passed out in the mud two days earlier.

"Are you sure you're okay?" She paused and she eyed his half naked state. "Your clothes are in the other room. I was just about to wash them. I'll go get them." She was blabbering and she turned to leave, but his hand on her arm stopped her.

"Wait. I want to know if I did something when I was out of it. You seemed... I don't know, hesitant earlier."

She looked up at him and felt the heat of a blush on her face. She quickly looked away, but he saw the red stain on her neck and dropped his hand away from her arm.

"What did I do?" He demanded, and then softened. "Did I hurt you?"

She quickly looked back at him, seeing what may have been regret in his eyes.

"God, no!" She felt the heat of embarrassment again, but ignored it and held his eyes with her own. "You have been a hand full though."

"What did I do?" He asked again.

She debated on what to say for a moment before responding.

"You talk in your sleep." She brushed some hair from her eyes.

"What did I say?"

"You also apparently got hot earlier." She ignored his question. "Because you walked outside and took off all your clothes." Her eyes danced away. "Well, most of your clothes. I managed to talk you out of talking off your underwear."

He brought his hand up to his face and rubbed it. "Shit, sorry."

"And when I brought you back in here you got a little ..." She was having trouble looking at him. "..amorous."

She saw the apology forming on his lips and she stumble guilty into the next part of her story.

"So I put you into a wrist lock." She cringed. "I'm really sorry. You weren't acting like yourself and I over reacted. I'm tired and it was the first thing I could think of."

She looked up and saw a swirl of emotions pass in his eyes. Before she could comment on it he put a hand behind her neck and pulled her closer. Placing a gentle kiss on her bruised forehead, he mumbled. "I'm the one that should be apologizing, not you."

She turned her head up to see his face and he looked away. Could he be embarrassed? She put her good hand on his face and angled it down to her.

"Look at me." She said gruffly. He sighed and looked down.

"You have nothing to apologize for, you were sick. Like I said, I over reacted." She said. He turned away again. He was embarrassed. For some reason that knowledge made her feel even more warmly about him.

"I told you I use to sleep walk as a kid. Sometimes when I'm stressed, I still do." He mumbled out an explanation.

"Like I said there's nothing to be sorry for. Yes, things got a little heated, but I was a willing participant right up until I realized you were still running a fever and your eyes were all glassy. Okay?"

"Okay." He looked down at her and she saw a smile in his eyes.

She dropped her hands and looked down, embarrassed by the admission. Seeing his bare toes she suddenly remembered his clothes in the other room. "Let me get your boots, the floor is cold. Go sit by the fire."

She heard an amused "Yes ma'am" behind her as she left the room.

She entered the vast room she began to call the antechamber in her head and limped over to where she had their clothes laid out waiting for a wash.

"I was supposed to be the... wow." Isabelle turned back at his cut off statement and saw Royce staring wide eyed at his surroundings. She followed his eyes and remembered the awe she felt the first time she entered the vast chamber. A few torches set up on the walls illuminated the interior, though the light they shone only encompassed a small area of the room. White walls decorated with reliefs of strange beings could be seen from the doorway of the smaller room. The large stone double doors off to the left were the only way in and out to the outside. In the center of the polished stone floor was a pool of clear clean water.

Royce stepped up to her as she stood next to the pool, still gathering in his surroundings. For a moment she allowed herself to remember the events from hours earlier.

She pulled Royce by his hand into the smaller of the two rooms, having just talked him into keeping on his boxer-briefs. He walked over and lay down on the hammock without a word. She pushed her dark hair behind her ears and went back to collect his clothes, which lay scattered in a line on the way to the outside door and the pile of wood Lilith had shoved into her arms moments before Royce stepped outside for his striptease. She still wondered why the she-creature was helping them and why she didn't enter the massive stone ruins she and Royce now occupied. She dropped his clothes by the pool before heading back into the smaller room with the wood.

She was surprised to see him sitting up. She dropped the wood by the fire warmed hearth and felt his eyes on her the entire time. When she looked back at his he stood and made his way quickly to her saying. "I followed the cracks to you." She frowned uncomprehendingly at his words and he covered her mouth with his own.

She stood frozen for a second before he tangled his hand in her hair and she melted into him. Her unencumbered hand went up to his face and she felt how warm he still was. She sighed into his mouth and pushed away from him. "You have a fever."

He continued to kiss her face. She attempted to twist out of his arms, but he compensated and kissed down her neck. Damn it, at any other time she would be enjoying his mouth on her neck, but now she fought the warm sensation tingling down her spine, because he was obviously still sick. "Royce." She said surprised at the huskiness in it. One of his hands found its way to her breast and the travel down her side.

"Royce." She managed to regain her normal 'in control' voice, she was starting to get a little nervous. She removed his hand from her breast and held it in her own. The other hand found her hip and squeezed causing pain to shoot out from the bruise. She reacted instinctively and the hand in hers folded painfully into a perfect wrist lock. He grunted, backing away and she let the lock go. He shook out his wrist, confused and looked over at her. She saw his eyes clear and knew that for the moment he was back.

"Go to sleep, Royce." She said in a soft voice and he did.

She came back to the present as he bent down in front of the pool and splashed his face with the water. "It's warm." He said in surprise.

"I think it's attached somehow to a warm spring somewhere. There's warm water coming in from those pipes at the bottom." She said pointing to holes along the side at the bottom of the pool. "It reminds me of a mikvah." She sighed and rolled her shoulders trying to remove the stiffness there.

Royce grabbed his pants from the stone floor and pulled them on. "Okay. What's a mikvah again?"

She smiled a little at him and said "It's sort of a ritual bath in Judaism. My safta would take me. I haven't been in ages though." They both stared down at the water for a few seconds. He grabbed his boots and slipped his bare feet inside.

"What's down there?" He said pointed towards the darkness. Isabelle crossed her arms and looked into the darkness before answering.

"I don't know. I haven't had been able to go exploring yet. I do know that's where all the cold air is coming from." The darkness chose that moment to solidify her words as a rush of ice cold air hit them. She crossed her arms tighter around her to ward off the chill. "The food should be ready now." She said and walked back into the warmer small room.

She served up the purple vegetables from the pot over the fire into bowls and handed him one as he walked in a moment later. He looked down at the bowl of food in his hands incredulously.

"You've been busy for the past two days. What have you been up to?"

Isabelle sat down on the fur that sat besides the wall and rested her head on the cold stone behind her. She closed her eyes, her head and arm were beginning to throb again and the kink in her neck would not go away. She felt him move to sit next to her, not touching.

"Not much, Lilith's been doing most of the work." She said tiredly and held up her bowl. "She gives us food, the leather, the wood for the fire, the medical treatment." She held up her cast laden arm, her head still on the wall. "That was all her. I've been mostly just trying to keep you out of trouble and trying not to vomit."

She opened her eyes in time to see him eying the food that was halfway to his mouth.

"The food's fine. It tastes like potatoes." She smiled and took a bite to assure him. "I think I have a little concussion that's all."

"That's all, she says." He grumbled and looked over to examine her tired bruised face. "When was the last time you slept?"

"Well, you mean?" She asked jokingly. She watched his face become stone and she felt like a wayward child. "I have been able to doze off for a few minutes, but I been busy with you and Lilith. I also set up a makeshift alarm system." She added almost proudly. The alarm system was little more than sticks and rope set up in a way that would make a hell of a lot of noise if moved, but she was still proud of it giving her current physical state.

"Okay, you will eat the rest of that stuff, get in that bed..." He pointed at the hammock. "..and go to sleep."

She rolled her eyes at him. "I'm not four anymore and can go to bed whenever I like."

They stared at each other for a few moments. The muscle in his jaw twitched. "And...I choose to eat the rest of this and go to bed." She backed down, knowing this would be a battle she would lose and one she didn't want to fight anyway. She was exhausted.

"Good." He replied simply and they turned back to their food. They ate the rest in silence.

It took Isabelle a few minutes trying to find a position in the hammock that didn't pull or push at an injury. Royce came back into the room after he had taken to bowls out to clean them in the pool if water and watched her predicament from the doorway. She finally found a position on her uninjured side that felt comfortable enough. She faced the door and the two humans looked at each other for awhile before she closed her eyes and allowed sleep to overtake her.

She woke up a short while later, still on her side, to the smell of burning wood and the crackle of a fire. She slowly opened her eyes and spotted Royce sitting between her and the fire. He was in his boxer briefs again and his clothes spread out in front of the fire to dry. He appeared to be dismantling her rifle.

"Didn't anyone tell you not to man-handle another's rifle?" She asked him quietly.

He smirked and glanced at her briefly before going back to work. "This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine." He quoted. "I'm the one who dirtied up it. Thought I'd clean it up too."

"I've been meaning to ask you about that."

He put the weapon parts down and scooted closer to where she gently swayed in the hammock.

"How you feeling?" He asked as he pushed an errant strand of dark hair behind her ear.

"Tired, achy, hungry, cold." She listed off and then rolled her eyes. "Pretty much how I've felt since we got here. Well, except for the cold part."

"I can help with that part." He said and stood up. He ducked under the rope that attached the hammock to the wall and stepped behind her. She was too sore and tired to turn and see what he was doing so she asked instead. The response she got was a sudden dip in the hammock that threatened to topple her out had she not grabbed hold of the fabric and a warm body pressing into her back.

He curled one arm above her head and the other around her waist. She took a deep breath when he nuzzled into her hair and was suddenly wide awake. Bizarrely, all she could think at the moment was she couldn't remember the English name for this position.

"Better?" He breathed into her neck and she managed to suppress the shiver that wanted to escape at the feel of it.

"Yes." She paused and decided to ask the question in her mind. "What is the name for this?"

"For what?" This time she was unable to suppress the shiver this time and he mistook her body's reaction for a chill and tightened his hold on her.

"This position. There is a word for it in English, but I can't remember it." She said after she found her breath.

"Spooning?"

"That's it." She smiled. "I don't think I've done it before. How long have I been asleep?"

He raised his head and looked down at her face. She turned her head and looked up at the astonished expression on his face.

"About two hours." He answered her question first before continuing. "You've never spooned? What kind of guys have you been with? You know what, don't answer that. I don't want to know." He shook his head and laid it back down in her hair. She turned her head back towards the fire and smiled when she felt more then heard him whisper. "Idiots."

"Tell me about my rifle."

"I repelled down the side using that rope we made..." He began his tale.

Ten minutes later she yawned, feeling her back push on his chest and knowing he was leaving something out of his story.

"I didn't think it was that boring." Royce said against her neck and she smiled.

"Neither did I. In fact, I think I would like to hear the parts you left out." She felt him stiffen slightly behind her.

"What makes you think I left something out?"

"I'm starting to know you well enough to know when you are not telling me everything."

"Oh, really?" He said amusement evident in his voice.

"And," she continued, "...you talked in your sleep. Most of it was just fever talk, but some of it...What happened to you out there?" She turned her head to look at him. She was uncertain if she should ask or if she should have left it alone, but she was always the curious sort. He looked past her into the distance, his mind somewhere else. He took a deep breath, his chest brushing her shoulder and licked his lips. Her eyes took in the motion and for a second forgot about the question she had asked, until her spoke again.

"A spider bit me and I started to see things. I'm still trying to sort it out." He looked down and saw where her eyes were and smirked. The hand that was still on her waist began to smooth down her side. He slid passed the bruise on her hip a little too heavily, causing pain to shoot up her side. She was unable to turn her head away in time and he saw her flinch.

"What's wrong with your leg?" He said darkly.

"It's nothing. What kind of things did you see?" She tried to change the subject.

"Let me see." He said and began to slide up the scratchy cloth that doubled as her dress. She put her hand over his halting its movement.

"It's fine; I just hit the ground too hard." She said, suddenly nervous. He'd seen her sweaty, bloody, stabbed, broken and beaten, but she didn't want him to see this bruise. True, she wasn't wearing her panties and in order for him to get a decent view of the injury she would have be completely embarrassingly bare to him. But that wasn't the only reason she was nervous. She had been worn thin for days and she didn't know if she could handle talking about the large jagged scar on the inside of her thigh without breaking down. There was little hope that he would not see it and he would ask about it when he did, everyone did. There were some scars that were better left unseen.

"Is?" He said so quietly that it made her turn and look back at him

"I'm not gonna do anything you don't want me to. I just need to see." His green eyes looked back at her, patient and pleading. She took in a breath and decided to see if she could take it, to see if they both could. She nodded a little and removed her hand. He gently began to move the fabric up again. She bit her lip and tried to tamp down her wildly beating heart.

"Please keep in mind that I haven't had the opportunity to shave in a few days." She quipped, attempting to take her mind off the situation before her.

He smirked at her and pinched the fabric between his thumb and fore finger. "Did the Lilith give you this to?"

"No, I found this in here actually. It was a bag and I just cut some holes into it." She said trying to ignore his hot breath on her skin and his fingers gently outlining the discolored area.

"So, you twisted your left ankle, hit your head on the left side hard enough to get a concussion, damn near broke your left hip by the looks of things and a few weeks ago got shot in the left shoulder. What have you got against lefties?"

She shrugged said shoulder and said "I try to be consistent."

He chuckled a little and placed an open mouth kiss gently on the bruised area. She sucked in a breath and held it at the tingling sensation his lips caused. His fingers drifted towards the inside of her thigh and she tensed as they swept past the older hated line of scar tissue.

"What's this?"

"That..." He voice faltered as remembered the incident that left its mark in more ways than one. "..that is a bad memory." She didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to think about it and hope he suddenly wasn't in the talking mood.

He cleared his throat. "Yeah. I've got a few of those myself." He let her off the hook and she let out the breath she didn't know she was holding.

His fingers traced the line for a second and slid up pass her hip to her stomach. He paused there for a second before he slid around to her back and down to her ass leaving a trail of goose bumps in its wake. Her breath caught in her throat, her heartbeat increased and an ache so profound hit her that she was willing to damn to consequences and pull him into her.

"Royce?" She half groaned, half squeaked.

"I know, I know." He said with his mouth still on her thigh. What did he know? Did he know how turned on she was from just that simple movement of his hand? She half hoped he did. He slid his hand back up her side and tugged the shift down again.

"No sex, I know." He said, the disappointment in his voice mirroring her own feelings. He settled back down behind her and she noticed that he had left a space that was not there before. She moved closer to him and brushed up against a hardness that took a second to register in her mind. When it did she moved across it again, enjoying the feel of him being as turned on as her.

He grabbed her hips and halted their movement.

"Please stop doing that." He said, strained.

Feeling bold and frustrated she said "I am told that there are other things that can be done to lessen this sort of tension."

"Mmmmm." He growled. "Don't tempt me woman."

She felt the heat of his words on her neck and she was ready, even eager, to tempt him.

"Besides you're gonna need to be pretty well healed up before I can do all the things I have planned." He continued. She relaxed, smiling against him. That sounded great and he was right, again. She could barely move right now without pain. They were quite for awhile in the gently swaying hammock, thinking of several indecent scenarios. Most of which included a bed of some sort.

"Royce?"  
"Mm?"

"Hurry up and get us off this fucking planet."

"Roger that." He said, chuckling.

* * *

The sun streaked through the rain, making a sort of hazy rainbow in the air. Isabelle sat under a canopy made of hides on a mat in the mud. Something about this seemed familiar to her. Lilith was finishing putting the last dab of quick hardening goo on her arm when they both heard the bird's alarm in the trees around them. Lilith spun around dropping the bowl she held and reached for the knife at her back. Isabelle looked past her and saw Royce stumble out of the woods.

"Royce?" She yelled out surprised by his arrival. How did he find her? She didn't even know where she was. He looked over and they had barely made eye contact before he fell to the ground. A surprised gasp left her and panic filled the space it left. She hobbled quickly through the rain soaked ground, aware that she was further injuring her sprained ankle and not caring. She slid in the mud besides him and landed on her knees. She shoved away the pain that shot up her hip. He lay still in the rain and for a moment she thought he was dead. He blinked up at her and asked if she was real and she thought, _not good_. She brought her good hand up to his face and felt hot he was and thought, _really__ not good_. A shadow passed over them and she looked up to see Lilith kneel down on the other side of him, looked down with curious eyes.

"He has a fever. Can you help him?" Isabelle asked, hoping the pleading in her voice would get her message across. He moved her hand from his face to his chest and she looked back down at him. He closed his eyes and the hand she was holding went limp. _Not any fucking good_.

"Royce?" She asked and untangled her hand from his on his chest. Her throat tightened as she reached her hand to his neck and felt for a pulse. Strong and sure it was there. She skimmed her hand up to his face and hair, checking for any clue as to why he had collapsed. There was no blood, nor a knot on his head. There did not seem to be a reason for him to be unconscious. Tears filled her eyes and dread filled her stomach as she stroked his face with the palm of her good hand and the fingers of her casted one. She tried saying his name again and shaking his shoulder. Why wasn't he waking up? _Please God don't let him die on me_, she prayed. How was she supposed to survive out here alone? She didn't know if she could, more importantly, she didn't want to.

She looked back up to Lilith and in a tiny voice said "Please."

The other woman looked between the two human and Isabelle saw her eyes fill with understanding. The Lilith bent over Royce only to jerk suddenly back up, surprised. A warm sticky substance splashed onto Isabelle's chest and face. The two females stared at each other a second and in unison looked down to see sharp metal protruding from Lilith's chest. The she-creature raised a hand towards it before it was forcibly ripped out the way it came, from the back.

"No!" Isabelle screamed as Lilith fell sideways in mud, and a hunter slid into view behind her, a spear in its hand. The world slowed down and a strange calmness overtook her as she looked at the new hunter. It seemed shorter than the others. The mask it wore bore a resemblance to a buffalo. Three red dots from the mask languidly drifted up the ground past Royce up her body and rested on her forehead. She felt the gravity of it bearing down on her locking her to the ground. The three dots blinked out and the hunter looked down at Royce's prone form. Suddenly she was afraid, afraid the thing would take him away from her. She threw her body over him.

"No!" She yelled again and a clawed hand came down on her head. She felt the hair pull from her scalp as she was tossed casually aside into the mud. The mud sucked her down and the fear turned into panic.

The hunter grabbed the back of Royce's vest and began to drag him away into the woods. Royce sleepily mumbled "Is?" as movement jarred him into semi-wakefulness.

"Royce!" She yelled trying to get him to wake up further. Her voice seemed to bring awareness to him finally and he began to struggle against the hold the monster had on his vest. She fought with the mud holding her down, but it seemed the harder she fought the further it sucked her down. Royce reached out an arm and yelled out her name just before the hunter and its prey vanished into the woods. She struggled against the mud and called out to him again, but mud filled her throat and tears filled her eyes.

"ROYCE!" She woke up in a panic, bolting upright. The sudden movement ejected her from the hammock and she landed painfully on the floor. Ignoring the pain in her body, she twisted around and almost franticly scanned the room. He was gone. Tears filled her eyes and her heart beat wildly in her chest. He was gone; he was never there to begin with. It was all a dream, all a dream.

Royce burst into the room, grouching low to the ground with his weapon up and at the ready, scanning the area. Confusion filled her sleep fogged brain as it attempted to catch up to what she was seeing. He was here, alive and moving. But was this another dream?

"Royce?" She said with a tiny voice and stood up slowly; half afraid if she moved to fast she would wake up. He looked over at her, satisfied that the room was secure. What he saw made him lower his weapon and stride over to her.

"Is? You okay?" Concern and confusion marred his features.

She stared up at him for a second, the dream of loss receding from her mind. Then she did something she never did before and later blamed on the concussion. She threw herself at a man. Royce took a step back from the force of Isabelle weight suddenly on him. He wrapped an arm around her as she literally crawled up him until she was able to bury her face into the side of his neck.

"Good morning." He said amused, until he felt let out a shaky breath.

"Hey. What's going on?" He tried to pull back to see her face, but she shook her head and remained buried. He walked back to the door, easy carrying her weight and placed their one viable weapon against the frame. He sat down indian style in front of the fire and adjusted her so she sat on his legs. He smoothed his hands down her back and hair. He waited unsure what to do about what he suspected was a female on the verge of break down. She pulled back soon after with an embarrassed smile on her face. He smiled bemusedly back happy to see her eyes free of tears.

"I had the worst nightmare." She said.

"Okay." He responded simply.

She put her fore head against his and closed her eyes for a moment. The dream ended differently than the actual events. Lilith still lived and had helped drag Royce to the ruins that were hidden by foliage a few meters away. Royce was still with her and was now waiting to see what she would do. She moved away, gave him a quick peck on the lips and quickly disentangled herself from his lap.

"What's the plan for today?" She said, smoothing her makeshift dress. She made a mental note to clean her pants before the day was up. He shook his head and stood up in front of her.

"I'm gonna set up a few traps around the perimeter and fix your alarm system. It was..." He paused seeing the warning in her eyes. _Don't mock me_. "...good, but could be better." She nodded her head.

"Lilith is usually here first thing in the morning with food." Her eyes wondered away in thought. "I wish there was a way to thank her."

As if on cue a scratching sound came from the other room followed by a strange dark voice. Royce tensed and spun towards his weapon. Isabelle reached out a hand and grabbed his shoulder.

"That's her." She said and he relaxed a little. "She doesn't come in here. I'm not sure why, she just hands me things from the door."

She stepped around him and walked to the cracked open door that leads to the outside. Royce watched the interaction of the two women from the doorway of the small room. The Lilith began speaking to Isabelle the moment she came into view. The she-creature handed over an animal of some kind to Isabelle, to which Isabelle responded with gratitude. The smaller woman placed the game inside on the stone floor, before sticking out her broken arm out towards the Lilith. Royce scrunched his eyes in confusion. The Lilith gently took up her arm and began to move the arm around inspecting the cast. Satisfied, she released the arm and reach a hand up, angling Isabelle's face into better light. Royce took a step into the larger room, fascinated by the strange mother daughter dynamic playing out before him. The movement brought the Lilith's eyes on him and he froze in sudden dread under her watchful eye.

Lilith dropped her hand and Isabelle turned to see Royce standing by the mikvah, staring at them. _This must seem strange to him. It is strange._ She thought. Lilith began to speak to Royce and made the gesture that Isabelle had come to understand as _come over here_.

"She wants you to come over here." She said to him.

"You understand her?" He asked his eyes still on the she-creature in the doorway.

"Not really, but I know that gesture."

He remained unmoving and eying Lilith warily. Isabelle understood his reluctance. She had felt the same way the first time Lilith had moved to take her injured arm, but when the winged creature simply examined her as if she were a patient, Isabelle relaxed.

"I think she just wants to check your injury." She motioned to his bandaged covered arm. He looked between the two females and then down at his arm.

"It feels fine." He said stepping back away from them.

Lilith spoke and motioned for him to come over again.

"She's not going to hurt you." Isabelle said.

He took a fortifying breath and slowly, hesitantly walked over to them. He jabbed his arm out towards the Lilith and looked away as she began to remove the bandage. Isabelle made to move away, but Royce stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Wait."

She looked up, saw how agitated he was and stopped.

"Okay. She really isn't going to hurt you."

"I know. I Just..." He shook his head and looked past both females into the raining day.

The Lilith paused briefly in her inspection of his arm and inspected the man and woman standing before her. She spoke quietly to herself and let his arm, bandage free, go. Royce quickly stepped away from her and made his way back to the smaller room without word. Isabelle watched his back, mystified by his reaction. He was willing to trust a tied up enemy hunter to get him home, but for some reason he could barely stand to be in the same area as Lilith. She blinked out of her retrieve as Lilith stepped back into the clearing and rose into the air. Isabelle waved at her and stepped back into the ruins.

She found him slinging his weapon around his shoulders. She watched him silently from the door.

"Is she gone?" He asked his eyes on his weapon.

"Yes."

"Good. Do you trust her?"

The question made her pause. The Lilith hadn't done anything to deserve mistrust yet. Indeed she had almost gone out of her way to help them. "Yes." She answered honestly. He looked up at her and nodded his head.

"If you do then I do, but I don't like her."

"I gathered that." She leaned against the door frame and waited for him to explain.

"After I'm done with the traps I'm gonna see if I can make it back to the drill and bring back some supplies." He said instead of an explanation on what just occurred. "This is a reasonably good position, the walls are thick and as far as I know none of those hunters knows about it."

"Today?" She pushed herself off the frame.

"Yeah. It shouldn't take long to get things secured here."

"Okay, I'll get my rifle back together and I should be ready to go by the time you are done with the traps." She looked over at her rifle still laying in pieces on the floor.

"I said, _I'm_ going."

She looked up at him sharply.

"We should stay together." She said, knowing he would argue.

"Yes, we should." He said, surprising her. "But..." _Here we go._ "you have a busted arm, a twisted ankle, a jacked up weapon and I checked your bracer while you slept, it's worthless. You're staying."

"What about you?" She put her hands on her hips, staring up at him in defiance.

"What about me?" He mirrored her posture.

"Your ankle is also twisted and until yesterday you were unconscious." She waved her unbroken arm towards the hammock.

"I'm fine." He gritted out angrily.

"No, you are not."

"What, am I suppose to do just sit here and heal up? We don't have that kind of time. Those things could come back and we only have one good weapon between the two of us and zero supplies. You know that." He pointed at her. "And there is only so much that Lilith thing can do for us."

"At least ..." She growled in frustration.

"No." He interrupted. "You're staying, I'm going. Haven't we been through this before? We had a deal."

She looked back up at him at set her jaw. Damn it, he was right. They did have a deal.

"At least give your ankle one more day to heal. One more day to eat and rehydrate. One more to get better prepared." _One more day with me._

His jaw tightened and for a second she thought he would flat out refuse, but then his shoulders relaxed and he said. "Fine."

"Good." She nodded, suddenly uncomfortable in the small room and moved to the hearth. "I'll get breakfast ready."

"I'll get more wood." He sighed and left the room.

* * *

Royce spent most of the day out preparing the area with traps and alarms. Isabelle put her rifle back together, wishing she had gun oil the entire time and washed her clothes. Royce came back at what constituted as midday on this planet and they ate the game Lilith had brought for lunch. He suggested to her around a mouth full of meat that she should spend some time exploring the dark half of the antechamber in his absence.

"There might be another exit down there." He explained. He left again shortly after. She found another sack for him to use to carry the extra gear in a corner.

He came back just before the planet circled into night, damp grumpy and carrying an arm load of extra wood. He dropped the wood on top of the stack that already stood high beside the hearth.

"That should keep for awhile." He said a looked down at her as she sharpened his knife on a rock. She had redressed in her own clothes and he was depressed he could no longer see her legs.

"Thanks." She said and pointed the knife at the pot of food she prepared earlier. "Dinner's the same as lunch, I'm afraid."

The strange domestic scene that they seemed to be playing a part in suddenly struck her. On Earth she was not a homemaker, on Earth he was not a provider, but here they had to be just that. You do what you have to, to survive. He once told her. Their current situation was a perfect example.

She dropped the knife and yawned. He grabbed a bowl of food as she stood up and stretched her arms over her head. The movement made her shoulder spasm; she cringed and slowly brought her arms down.

"What's wrong with your neck?" He asked when he saw her roll her neck and bite her lip.

"Rough landing." She smirked over at him.

He narrowed his eyes at her and waited for a good answer. She sighed and sat back down.

"I'll be fine. My shoulders are just a little stiff." She said. He dropped his bowl of food half eaten next to him and stood. He walked behind her. She was just about to turn to see what he was doing when she felt his legs frame hers as he slid in behind her. She closed her eyes as he smoothed her hair off her shoulders and down her back.

"What are you doing?...Ahhh." Her voice turned into a moan when he began to massage her sore shoulders. A hiss escaped her mouth as he found a particularly knotted muscle.

"Sorry." He said and stopped the movement of his hands.

"No, no, it's good. Keep going, please."

He continued and cleared his throat.

"I, uh, I got those traps set." He stated and proceeded to tell her where they lay and how to disable them. She struggled to absorb the information he was telling her, but hard to do when his hands were easing all of the tension out of her body. After awhile she gave up all together and slumped back into his chest. His hands came down her arms.

"Did you hear anything I just said?" He said next to her ear.

"Hmm hmm." She said sleepily.

"Is?" He turned to look at her face better.

"I heard you." She said with her eyes closed and her head lolling back on his shoulder. "There are four traps 10 meters apart in a spread from the door and an improved alarm on the door."

"Okay." She heard the smile in his voice. "Time for bed then."

"In a minute." She yawned.

"I did a good job then?"

She smiled in response and he put his arms around her and pulled her closer. She dozed lightly for a few minutes before he nudged her.

"I can't let you sleep like this. You'd be pissed of you wake up with a kink back in your neck. Time to move."

He helped her to her feet and she walk sleepily to the hammock. She kicked off her boots and laid down in the same comfortable position as the night before. She watched through half closed eyes as Royce put some more wood on the fire. He took off his vest and she watched the muscles in his back contract and relax as he put more wood in the fire. She couldn't believe her rotten luck sometimes. The whole trapped on an alien game preserve aside. Here was a beautiful man she wanted and wanted her, but there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it. At least there was nothing her broken-of-child-baring-age body would allow her to do. Well, there was still one thing she could still get.

"Come to bed." She said huskily.

The breath left him when he heard her moan out those words. He looked over and saw her sleepy eyes gazing at him intently. He attempted to control his arousal as he quickly walked around behind her and slid into the hammock. They both groaned as her ass came in contact with his half erect member. He wanted to roll her over rip off her pants and plunge in, but he wouldn't. Not with her no sex rule still in place or her inability to move without pain flashing in her eyes. Then there was that scar on the inside of her thigh that made her close up faster than he'd ever seen. He'd find out the story about that later, but until then he decided the best thing to do at the moment was to ignore his hard on. He folded himself around her warm body, his nose in her hair and hand on her stomach. There wasn't much this shit hole planet had to offer but at least he could still get this.

* * *

Isabelle woke up cold and alone in the morning. For a second she was afraid Royce had already left, until she saw him standing in the doorway between the rooms. She carefully stood up from the hammock and padded barefoot across the cold floor to him. He looked up from the straps on the mask he was adjusting.

"I was about to wake you up. I'm gonna leave you the machete, just in case."

"Thanks. Got everything?"

"Yeah. There's a break in the rain so..."

They stood there awkwardly for a few seconds not sure what else to say to each other.

"I guess you should be on your way then." She said, pushing some hair behind her ear.

"Yeah." He said. He looked down at the mask in his hands then back at her. He opened his mouth once but then closed it again. He shook his head and made his way to the exit. She followed behind him. He paused at the door and turned back to her pulling the mask over his face. "I should be back in four days. If I'm not back in five th..."

"You'll be back." She interrupted him.

"Right." He said and reached to his bracer clad forearm to turn on the cloak.

"Wait." She stilled the motion with one hand over his and reached up to tilt the mask back a bit just so his lips were exposed. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him with all the emotion she could muster. He wound his free arm around her waist as he kissed back. Lack of oxygen forced her to break away. She fell back to her feet and pulled his mask back down into place.

"Okay. Now you can go." She smiled up into where she knew his eyes were and activated the cloak with the hand still on his forearm. He shimmered out of existence. She felt his arms drop away as she stepped back.

"I'm crazy about you." She heard the whispery cloaked voice of Royce. The air swirled around her and she knew he was gone.

That night she had a dream about riding on the back of a lioness through a barren landscape flanked by black winged angels, metal faced demons and the wind whispering "I love you" in different languages.

Note: Let me take this moment to say, while it should be obvious by now, I enjoy angst. There is however a fine line between dramatic enjoyment and unrealistic agony. Things will get better, promise.


	10. Bent

Note: 1. Please, please review. 2. Sorry about the lateness. Had to move to another state again and of course the laziness is always an issue. 3. This is my first attempt at writing something, shall we say "adult". Observe the new rating and please tell me what you think. It's hard (snicker) work. So get the kids out of the room and wash up when you're done.

**Survival Skills: Bent**

Six days. Royce had been gone for six days. Isabelle stood naked navel deep in the mikvah scrubbing dirt from her skin and attempting to not let her mind dwell on that fact. The cold air from the darkness behind her stung her bare shoulders and she nestled deeper into the warm water.

The first day she spent, as Royce suggested, exploring the dark half of the room. Armed with a torch, the ridiculously big machete and her rifle she followed the reliefs on the wall in the darkness. The reliefs seemed to tell a story of some kind of disaster. Pictures of barren wastelands and other Lilith like creatures on their knees looking up towards the heavens adorned the walls. The final picture stood beside a yawning mouth of a large cave opening. The picture on it was a puzzling array of the smaller wingless creatures laying in rows like an assembly line being held captive by larger Lilith creatures. Isabelle took the picture as some kind of warning of what might lie beyond and headed carefully into the cave. There were caves that were scared to people back home on Earth. She hoped it was scared here as well and she was not walking into an old death camp. She had visited Auschwitz once and these two places had a very different feel to them. For one thing, no one had built a temple-like structure of this size in front of the entrance to the camp in Germany.

The ground crunched as she took her first step into the abyss of darkness, the torch light dancing on the rough sides of the cavern. Looking down, she discovered a substance that reminded her of seashells and they seemed to create a pathway. The path of shells curved and bent though the cave and she noticed that the off shoots leading off in other direction did not have the shells.

It seemed like hours later before she stumbled, ankle throbbing, to a halt in front of a door. A large metal door, that reminded her of a hatch on a ship, complete with a turn wheel and dogs. She stood in front of the door for a moment, before shaking off her befuddlement. A strange metal door at the end of a natural cave, at the end of an ancient temple, was just another thing to add to the list of things she didn't understand on this planet.

She stepped closer to the door and debated her options. She could leave it closed and go explore one of the dark shell-less passages. She wasn't a spelunker and she would undoubtedly get horribly lost. Besides, if there was another way out this would most likely be the direction. She could wait for Royce and see what he thought. That option rankled her feminist sensibility to no end; she was a big girl and could make a decision by herself. She could open the door and see what was on the other side. She knew she was going to take this option even as all the bad things that could happen raced through her head. She smiled to herself and shook her head. _You buy your ticket, you take your chances, Isabelle._

She propped up the torch besides the door and touched the door. It was cold, very cold. Icy air gust steadily around the sides of the obviously non airtight door making her shiver and wish she was dressed warmer. With an effort that left her breathing fast and her arm aching she managed to turn the large cog wheel. The dogs securing the door to the metal frame popped open with a screech. She took a second to rub her hands together trying to warm them up before she pulled the heavy door open. Inside was dark and she stood behind the door, accessing the interior for any dangers. She tossed in the torch to get a better look, unwilling to blindly step into an unknown area. _Not all tickets were worth the price of admission._

The frosted air swirled as the torch lit up a small metal passageway and bounced off another door at the end. Her eye spotted what appeared to be gray cloth on the immediately on the other side of the door ground. She stepped around the door, rifle at the ready, to get a better look. The white cold air parted and the leathery shrunken face of a man greeted her. She took a step back in surprise only to have the heavy door hit her in the back, pushing her forward as it swung suddenly to close. She gripped the door frame and pushed the door back with her back, glad she hadn't walked in yet and gotten trapped inside. That was probably how the dead man on the ground got here. She used the machete as a makeshift door stop and once she was satisfied she wouldn't end up trapped she stepped inside.

She crouched down and inspected the area first. The metal wall behind the mummy was splattered with dry blood, but the rest of the small room was clean. She noted that the freezing air came from a small wire covered vent above the inner door. The room reminded her of a walk in freezer. Deciding to inspect the inner door in a moment, she turned her attention to the remains.

The mummy sat upright in the corner, the fabric covered legs draped across the bottom of the raised door frame. A tattered brown jacket still covered the torso and around the waist was a belt half filled with bullets. Isabelle had seen a documentary a long time ago when she was working for the CIA about the American wild west. The outfit this man wore looked very similar to the outfits she saw the actors wear. An old rifle lever action lay across his lap. Her mind suddenly leaped to the hammock that was already hanging when she first dragged Royce in and the question that nagged at her since she first saw it. This man may have been the one to set it up a long time ago. The hunters _have_ been bringing people here for a long time.

She sighed, rolling her neck and debated her options again. She couldn't leave the man here, in this cold tomb of a room. It didn't seem right and besides walking over a dead body to get to the other door was creepy. She slid the rifle from under his hand, felling a little bad about looting a corpse. It was for a good cause, she needed a weapon better than a machete and her own rifle was sort on ammo. It still felt like desecrating a tomb, however.

The movement of the mummy's hand sliding away from the rifle caused its head to slump down reveling a large meaty hole in the back of his head. She quickly looked away and swallowed back the bile that churned in her throat. The blood on the wall and the haphazard placement of the rifle suddenly made sense. _He shot himself instead of starving to death, brave man, _she thought. Taking a fortifying breath shebegan to delicately scavenge what she could from the rest of the remains. The ammo belt, she was him was happy to see, still had over half the shells in it. She also found some icy oil in a bag, some old coins and a faded black and white picture of a man and a woman in the mummy's breast pocket.

She carefully dragged the body out of the room and down one of unmarked passages. She stood awkwardly for a moment over the remains. She had nothing to use to bury the body and she didn't see enough rocks to cover it up. She briefly thought about setting up a pyre outside, but that would attract a lot of unwanted attention. In the end she left him where he lay, at least he was out of the cold. She walked back to the cold room, retrieved the machete and watched as the door swung violently shut. Exhaustion hit her and she wondered how long she was down in the bowels of a mountain. She made her way back to the antechamber and splashed water from the mikvah on her face and scrubbed her hands. Promising herself a longer wash in the morning, she fell exhausted and aching into the hammock and slept and dreamed.

* * *

Upon awaking she ate the last bit of meat from Lilith's earlier visit two days and stepped into the antechamber intending to soak in the warm clean looking water of the pool. She didn't know what kind of weird bugs or bacteria that the pool might be harboring and this point, she didn't care. She felt filthy. However, half way to her destination, she heard the now familiar sound of Lilith calling out to her. Isabelle greeted the creature and was surprised to find a bow and a handful of arrows shoved at her, as she exited. Lilith stepped back into the light of the sun and motioned for Isabelle to follow. Isabelle sighed and glanced longingly at the pool of warm water before stepping out to follow. _I guess it's time to earn my keep._

The first day on the hunt was a learning process for both females. Isabelle came back to the temple much later, sans meat. She did, however, have a sack full of the purple colored vegetable and a new knowledge base. She now understood the best places the vegetable grew and how to harvest them. She also figured out how to hold the bow in a way that didn't cause her broken arm to immediately flare with pain. She ate the purple plant for dinner with her mind on a to-do list for the next day. She would be successful on the hunt tomorrow. She would find out what was behind that second door in the cold room. She would figure out if the old rifle was salvageable. She would try not to worry about Royce.

She stood up out of the mikvah five days later and scoffed at her own hubris. She managed to fail at everyone of her to do list, except one. The old rifle, surprisingly, worked great. After she cleaned it up, she stood outside in the damp air and took aim at a hunk of wood. She ignored the visions that filled her head of a catastrophic event that would blow her face off and fired, hitting right where she aimed. She brought the rifle as well as the bow instead of her own sniper rifle when she hunted with Lilith; it weighed less and had more ammo. Though, she mostly chose the stealth of the bow over the fire power of the rifle.

She broke the last item on her list almost immediately. As she crept quietly through forest with Lilith high above waiting for her to flush out an animal, she couldn't help but think how much easier it would be if they shared the same language or at least a similar pattern of hand signals. Then she remembered that with Royce she barely needed any of those to communicate. She managed to keep her mind off of him, for the most part, during the day, but at night when she had nothing else to keep her mind occupied her thought would inevitability drift to him until she fell asleep. Not worrying about Royce was like not breathing. If a person holds their breath long enough they will pass out. Once that happens, the body inhales the oxygen it needs to survive. Even then her dreams were filled with him.

The hunts proved to be mostly fruitless endeavors. Although the two females had finally stumbled onto a workable relationship, involving a few whistles and hand signals. They had really only managed to kill two of the rabbit-like creatures that inhabited the area, including the one that now boiled in a pot over the hearth.

The second door in the cave proved to be much harder to open than the first. This door had a clear locking mechanism that kept the turn wheel from, well, turning. She tried to finesse the lock open using her abysmal lock picking skills. She tried to use a hunk of wood as a lever on it. She even tried brute force, but the turn wheel refused to budge more than a few centimeters. All her efforts only caused considerable pain in her broken arm. She suspected that the only one that could open the door was someone who bared a striking resemblance to the reliefs in the wall, Lilith.

Three days ago after another unsuccessful hunt Isabelle managed to coax Lilith into the antechamber. Isabelle hoped Lilith would be able to shed some sort of light on the mystery of the cold room and the eerie reliefs. However, the winged creature examined the reliefs with curiosity and true bafflement. When she came to the final wall relief, Lilith reach out and touched the stone edifice. Isabelle watched as the other woman's eyes tear up, before the she creature fled from the room. She found Lilith the next morning and again this morning staring at the last relief before they continued outside for their hunt. Whatever was going on in the Lilith's head was a complete mystery to Isabelle and she felt guilty for introducing such a state onto the creature.

She shook off the melancholy thoughts, dried off and donned her beat up pants and shirt. The smell of her half of the rabbit creature wafted into the antechamber. Lilith had divided it up before she left for the day. She grabbed the rifle she had kept next to the pool while she bathed and walked towards the smell. She heard the loud noise of wood hitting stone from the alarmed door entrance and she gracefully spun, crouched down and raised her weapon towards the sound in one movement.

She heard a muffled "Damn." Then a much clearer. "Is?"

She smiled, lowered the weapon and stood up. The bag she had given Royce was flung into the room just before the man himself stepped in.

"You're late."

"Sorry about that."

He sagged against the wall besides the door and closed his eyes. The mask that was dangling from his fingers dropped with a clank to the ground. She tilted her head in concern and studied him. "You look like hell."

Dark circles colored his eyes. A week long beard covered his face and his hair had taken on a decidedly wild man appearance.

"Royce?" She slung her rifle into her elbows and stepped over to him.

"I'm fine." He said and scrubbed his hand over his tired eyes. "I haven't slept more than a few hours since I left. I'm just tired."

She reached up and touched his neck. He looked down at her when he felt her warm fingertips.

"Okay. Then you should get in the pool, wash up and go to sleep." She nodded over to the pool. "I'll bring some food over."

He nodded and Isabelle bent down to grab the sack of supplies.

"Is that a new gun?" He eyed the rifle on her back.

"Sort of. I'll tell you all about it later. I can handle this. Get in the pool." She said when he reached for the sack. He nodded and turned to the water.

She stumbled into the small room with the full sack and wondered how Royce had managed to carry it as far as he did. She sighed and dropped it to the side of the room, deciding to go through it later. She made quick work carving up the meat and putting it in the bowls. The teasing comment she had prepared regarding his wild hair died on her lips as she walked into the antechamber. He stood bare chested and waist deep in the middle of the mikvah. She watched the water dripped down his bare chest as he slicked his wet hair back. She was suddenly and profoundly glad he was here, alive and healthy.

As she walked closer to the pool she noted that his clothes and weapon were heaped nearby. A quick glance into the crystal clean water confirmed her suspicion of his nakedness. She hastily placed a bowl of food by the edge and turned to leave.

"I will just let you get to your bath."

A wet hand shot out and grabbed her ankle. "Wait. Stay."

She turned back confused by what sounded like desperation in his voice.

"I haven't...I just need... Can you..." He dropped his hand away with a sigh and scrubbed at his face again. "Stay and talk to me for awhile. Okay?"

"Okay." She nodded. "Are you sure you're alright?"

He nodded and sunk deeper into the warm water. "Tell me about your "sort of" new rifle."

It suddenly hit her that he had been alone in the wilderness for six days. While, she had some sort of social contact with Lilith, he had no one. For all of his protest that he was better off alone when they first met here, he was now craving contact. She reset the door alarm and came to sit indian style at the edge of the pool.

Half way through her story of the mummy and strange doors she kicked off her boots and dipped her feet in the warm water. The edge of her pants got wet and without thinking, her mind still on her escapades over the past few days, she squirmed out of her pants and let her bare legs soak in the water.

"We managed to catch the rabbit thing this morning." She looked away towards the other room where the remnants of their dinner stewed and heard the movement of water. She looked up in time to see him glide in between her legs.

"Royce?"

"Your face looks better." He said, as his fingers drifted over the yellowed bruise.

"It feels better." Her fingers gripped the edge of the pool at his sudden proximity.

"How's the shoulder?" His hand slipped to her neck.

"Good."

"The arm?" He lifted her broken arm and eyed the cast.

"Broken, but healing."

"The hip?" He replaced her broken arm to the edge of the pool and slid his hand across her hip.

"Better." She swallowed.

"And the ankle?" He slid his hand further down her leg.

"Barely even feel it."  
"Good, then I can do this." He covered her mouth with his own.

His wet hands slid up the outside of her thighs and she forgot what she wanted to say. His wet chest pressed into her dry shirt and she forgot why she was still dressed. He tasted like dirt and blood and she briefly wondered if he was hurt. She pulled him closer and wrapped her arms around his neck. The need for air pushed them apart and he placed his forehead on hers.

"Miss me?" She said jokingly, after she caught her breath. He responded with a grunt and began to kiss his way down her throat. He found a small scar just below her jaw line and traced it with his tongue. The paradoxical sensation of the rasp of his beard followed by soft lips made her shiver and she thought about changing her stance on facial hair. He tugged her closer to the edge of the pool and moved his hands to her thighs. His fingers brushed passed the line of scar tissue there and he felt her flinch, he remembered her similar reaction days earlier. He wasn't sure if this was the best time to bring up bad memories. They had the tendency to put an end to good moments and this could turn into a very, very good moment. But, damn it, he didn't want her flinching every time he got close to an area that was quickly becoming his favorite place to be.

He sighed and pushed away slightly. She blinked up at him.

"Tell me about this." He brushed his fingers over the scar again. She looked down at his hands and tensed. He saw her hesitation and slid her good hand away from where it rested on his shoulder to the scar on the front of his neck.

"Got this from a knife fight I almost lost in Iraq." Her brow scrunched and she traced the line with her fingertips. He moved her hand down his chest to his side where she felt another scar. "This was from some unfriendly fire in Colombia." He pulled her arm around him and moved it to yet another scar near the small of his back. He let go of her hand and wrapped himself around her. "That one was from a car wreck in Texas." He said into her dark hair.

They were silent for a moment as she tried to absorb all he was giving her. He angled his head down to her shoulder and kissed the almost healed scar there over her shirt.

"I know where this one came from." He mumbled into her shirt. He moved to her neck again and nipped at the scar he had found earlier. "Where did this one come from?"

She let out the breath she didn't realize she was holding.

"That is from a hand to hand training accident at Quantico." She moved his hand that had taken up residency on her waist, up under her shirt to another scar. "This is from an appendectomy in Tel Aviv." She felt him smile on her neck, before he tugged her shirt up and dipped down to replace his fingers with his lips. She sucked in a pleasantly surprised breath at the feel of his warm breath on her side. The hell with it, she thought and tugged her shirt up and over her head, tossing it near her pants. She slid his hand to the scar on the inside of her thigh. He stopped his perusal of her appendix scar and looked up at her. She had her eyes fixed on the far wall and took a breath.

"This is from a very bad day in Israel." She paused a second to collect her thoughts. He slipped down into the water and moved to the front of her knees, fingers tracing the old wound.

"Israel has a human trafficking issue. I was strongly encouraged to help the local police in Jerusalem in an undercover assignment. Nobody knew me, I could speak a different language and I guess I don't look half bad."

"You're beautiful." He interjected from his place by her knee.

She looked down at him with a small smile on her face and put her hand on his head. He nudged her knee with nose and she looked away.

"Truth be told I was happy to help. The CIA was involved and it was scary how easy it was for me to get in. I was to be sent to a house in the old city where I would be given the fake papers we had already bought. I was supposed to record everything on a little hidden camera. Things went bad when we got to the house. They tossed a bag over my head as soon as I got to the house, herded me into a car and took me somewhere else. Later I found out they shot the other undercover with me and the backup crew lost me in the confusion. It took them a few hours to find me. I guess I should feel lucky they found me at all. They tied me up and one of them said he did this kind of thing all the time and I should just relax. He said that if I fought back he would make it hurt. He didn't lie, it hurt."

Tears filled her eyes and Royce's jaw hurt with the effort it took not to show his anger at these unknown scum bags. He knew, of course, of all the sick bastards that inhabited the Earth. He just didn't like the thought of her being hurt by them. Not like that. Not his Isabelle. He put his arms around her waist and laid his head down on her lap.

"When they got done," She continued, "they would cut my leg. The last arrogant _caralho _left the knife on the table and I managed to free myself. I must have blacked out for a while, because the next thing I knew, the backup was bursting through the door and I was standing over two dead men."

"Good girl."

She looked down at him.

"You know, the first man I told had quite a different reaction."

"That guy was an idiot." He mumbled into her leg and she scratched though his hair.

"The police called it self defense. I saw a counselor and took a long leave to Brazil." She shrugged, not sure why she was sharing all this. "It was a long time ago I still have nightmares sometimes, but flashbacks are rare. I eventually even found a man that didn't recoil in horror when found out."

"Who?" He looked up, the thought that she might have a significant other back home made him unhappy. She smiled mysteriously at him.

"Just some guy with wild hair lying in my lap."

He growled at her tease and stood up fully, placing himself between her legs again. He balled up his fists on either side of her hips and he leaned into her personal space. "I don't think you could say anything that would scare me."

"We'll see, _ahuvi. Hitgaagati elekha_." She said and she watched his eyes dilate.

"That's not fair." He said and kissed her hard. He trailed down to her neck and felt her pulse increase on his lips.

"We, ah, should clean up the bowls." She said even as she leaned her head back to grant him better access.

"Later. There's something I need to do first." He traveled to her wounded shoulder and gave the mending flesh a kiss before wandering further south over the tops of her breast.

"What do you need to do?" She asked breathlessly.

"See if I can get rid of some more nightmares." He smiled wickedly up at her and his hand drifted down her sides to her open legs.

"What are you...oh!" She startled as his fingers traced the waistband of her panties. He kissed his way back up her neck. Arousal and embarrassment warred in her as she realized his intentions. His hand dropped lower to her thigh, his fingers curling under the seam of her underwear where they met her inner thigh.

"Wait!" She reached for his head. He halted movement and looked up.

"You don't have to. I mean no one's ever...I haven't washed..." She closed her eyes. Shit. What was it about this man that turns her into a stuttering fool?

"Trust me." He said and pushed away some of her hair that had fallen into her eyes. He leaned in closer, until they were cheek to cheek.

"I want to do this." His teeth nibbled on her earlobe and she moaned. "Out there, alone at night, this was all I wanted to do. This is where I wanted to be."

She gave in and bit down lightly on his shoulder. He considered the bite to be the green light from her and he'd actually get her to say it out loud soon enough. He slid his hand down her stomach and placed his open palm over the crotch of her underwear and found them, much to his surprise, wet. Her hips bucked involuntarily into his hand and he was awed briefly into stillness. He did this to her. This beautiful, damaged, tough, hot woman. She was wet and ready for him and he had barley even touched her yet.

Taking his sudden stillness that she had done something wrong, she blinked up at him. "Royce?"

He grunted and cleared his head of all the sentimental bullshit that was hitting him suddenly and kissed her. His fingers raked back up and toyed with the elastic briefly before plunging under them. He found the spot that made lightening shoot up her spine and arch into him. She tore her mouth away from his, closed her eyes and leaned her head back, her breath bouncing off the walls around them.

He looked down at her, offering up her neck, moaning and bucking under his hands. The sight made him harder than he ever thought possible. It took all his will power not to remove the scrap of fabric between them and plunge into her. Plenty of time for that later, he thought. Instead he pushed up her sports bra with his free hand and felt the weight of a bare breast in his palm. It felt perfect in his hand and she must have thought so as well, because she began to pant.

She looked down at him barely able to keep her eyes open and what she saw made her almost forget to breathe. He looked up at her, his eyes dark, with a predatory grin. He bent down and claimed a rosy nipple with his mouth. At the same time she felt him curl a finger in her. She broke apart a second later, moaning his name, arching up and pulling his head closer to her.

So intent was he on tasting her that her climax took him by surprise. Her grip on his head hurt but he would gladly endure the pain for a life time if it meant he got to hear his name come out of her mouth like that again. The sound almost made him come. He slowed the movement of his fingers as she came back down to herself and ease out from under her panties. The grip on his head loosened and he looked up at her. A marine Sergeant in a time of drunken revelry had once told him that a man shouldn't have to ask if a woman if she had come or not. If a man was doing his job right, he would know. Royce looked at the woman limp in his arms, rosy cheeked, closed eyed and he took pride in the fact that he had done his job.

Isabelle finally found the strength to open her eyes after the world shaking orgasm she had just experienced and found Royce smirking proudly at her. Her competitive nature flared up, she could give just as good as she got, and she brought his head up to her and kissed the daylights out of him. She broke away from him and used his dazed state to push him back into the pool.

"My turn." She said with her own predatory gleam and slipped into the water to stand in front of him. She anchored him to her with her casted arm around his neck and let her other hand travel down the plains of his chest, fascinated by the way the muscled clenched under her fingers. She felt his hands on either side of her face and she looked up at him.

"You don't hav..." She silenced him by standing on her toes and kissing him.

"Maybe in here, alone at night, this is all _I_ wanted to do." She repeated, more or less, his own words back at him. He growled and gripped her to him. They both moaned as naked breast met naked chest. She felt him hot and hard against her stomach. He was a big man in general and when she slipped a hand under the water and felt him her palm she was happy to find that bigness extended everywhere.

Good things hardly ever happened to Royce and when they did he took the time to enjoy them. So when her little hand wrapped around him he had to reach his hands to the side of the pool to keep from falling into the water, shooting off like a fire cracker and ending it all too soon. This was a very good thing that he wanted to last as long as possible.

The height difference between the two of them put her at the perfect spot to feast on his neck and shoulders as she stroked him. She looked at him with her mouth on his shoulder, she found his eyes closed and muscles taunt. He was close, but he was holding back for some reason and that simply would not do.

"Do you like this?" She said huskily up at him. He nodded; bit his lip and his breath increased raggedly. She remembered the way he reacted to her earlier when she spoke to him in Hebrew. If he needed her to talk to him for him to experience what she just felt then that's what she would do.

"You made me feel so good. I want you to feel that good." She purred to him. He shook his head and tightened his grip on the sides of the pool.

"I don't know when...This has to last..." He said breathlessly. Determined, she stood up on her toes again, maintaining her pace on him, and whispered into his ear.

"You fit so good in my hand. You are going to feel so good inside me. Come for me, _ahuvi, _come for me."

God help him, he did. Her words ricocheted around his head as he exploded in her hand. _Inside me. Come for me. _

She smiled into his neck when she felt his hot juice on her hand and stomach, before the water of the pool washed it away. Pity, she was curious what he tasted like. Next time she would just have to use her mouth for something other than talking dirty and by God there had better be a next time soon.

He brought her face to his, kissed her almost sweetly.

"What does ahuvi mean?"

She burst out laughing and Royce was stunned into a smile himself by the beauty of it. She grabbed his hand and pulled him to the edge.

"You'll have to find that out for yourself." She said as she pushed her bra back into place, pushed herself out of the pool and began to get dressed.

"That's not right." He said. How was he supposed to find out? A wicked image of her naked and hot bent over in front of him begging to tell him, flashed in his head. Before he got the chance to try out, his body chose that moment to remind him just how little sleep he had gotten and he yawned.

Isabelle, now fully dressed, looked down at Royce still in the pool as he rubbed his eyes like a little boy. She smiled and reached her hand down for him.

"Come on, I think it's time for bed."

He looked up at her, the feral glint back in his eyes and Isabelle remembered that while Royce was a lot of things a little boy was not one of them. He ignored her hand and lifted himself out of the water to stand naked and wet in front of her.

"Will you be joining me?" He asked as seductively as he could while holding back another yawn.

"I'm going to clean up here first, but yes." She said. She tried to maintain control of her hormones even though all she wanted to do was jump up in his arms and wrap her legs around him. Royce made it easier for her as the yawn he was fighting back escaped. She picked up his boxer-briefs and handed them to him.

"Here. Go to bed."

"Need any help cleaning?" He asked putting on his underwear and hoped she would say no, he really was tired.

"Nope." She said and got to work cleaning.

He walked bleary eyed to the small room and laid down in the hammock. He could hear her splashing and clattering in the other room and felt his muscles relax. He closed his eyes and willed sleep to come. After a few minutes, he gave up and turned his head and caught a glimpse of Isabelle as she wandered in and out of the room singing softly in Spanish, unaware he was awake. It took him a few days to figure out why he couldn't sleep out in the jungle. He'd never had any problem before, but then again he'd never gotten use to having anyone curled up next to him either. He was beginning to think he was turning to mush in his old age.

She walked into the room finally ready for bed and was surprised to see him still awake.

"You're still up?" The statement came out like a question and he nodded.

"Why? Was I being too loud?" Her hand skimmed down his face when she approached the hammock.

"No. Just waiting for you." He said and push backwards to give her space to lie down. She tilted her head and let out a confused smile before getting in next to him. He wrapped an arm around her waist and buried his nose in her hair.

"Much better." He said.

Isabelle felt his soft snores on her neck a few minutes later and closed her eyes to follow him into sleep.

* * *

Something had woken Royce up. His eyes were open and glancing around the room in a flash, assessing for any threat. He eyed his weapon as it leaned against the wall, the room was quite and nothing was out of place. He laid his head back down and closed his eyes, when he heard Isabelle whimper in her sleep besides him. He cursed himself silently for pushing her to talk about her past. He of all people knew some things came back at night to haunt if they were remembered in the day. He nestled his nose in her dark hair, wondering what he should do and hoped the nightmare would pass. She began to thrash about in their makeshift bed and Hebrew began hissing out of her mouth. Though he didn't know the words, he understood the pleading tone and he hated it. Fearing she might tumble them both out of the hanging bed, he put his hand on her hip and pulled her closer. Unfortunately this only seemed to make things worse.

"Is, wake up." He moved his hand up and brushed her hair out of her sweaty face. "Wake up. You're dreaming."

Her jaw clenched and a sound that could only be described as agony came from her throat. An uncomfortable sensation seized his chest and for one terrible second he was there with her in the dream. One filled with the pain, unseen faces and sour breath. He swallowed back his own tears and buried his face deeper into her hair. "Please wake up." He pleaded, willing her to wake. "Isabelle, wake up, baby. Wake up."

With a start that would have sent a slower man tumbling from the hammock, she shot up right and breathing hard. He quickly steadied the rapid swing of the hammock by bracing them with a leg to the ground. Her hands bunched at the fabric of her shirt and she cast a frantic look around the room.

"Is?" He asked and tentatively rested his fingers on her back. She spun her head around at the sound of his voice and looked down at him. Tears streaked down her face and recognition filled her eyes. "Royce?"

"You had a nightmare." He said lamely. She turned her head back around and her shoulders began to shake.

"Crap. No. Come here." He said, a piece of him wanting to cry with her and pulled her to him. She fell into his chest, her cast digging into his ribs and began to weep. All he could was hold her and hope she was strong enough to make it through. She calmed down a bit later and he thought she might have fallen back to sleep.

"I'm sorry." She mumbled into his chest, before pushing off him and spinning in the hammock to place her feet on the ground.

"It's okay." He said. She snorted angrily.

"No it's not. I don't cry like that. Ever. You probably think I'm a little girl. I just wish I wasn't so..." She cut herself off and stood up shaking her head.

"Wasn't so what?" He asked sitting up to face her.

"Nothing." She brushed her hair back from her face, her profile to him.

He grabbed her wrist and tugged her in between his legs. She refused to look at him.

"Wasn't so what?" He asked again firmly. She looked at him and bit her lip at the intensity of his gaze. He wasn't going to give up on this one and if he hadn't been listening for it he would have missed her whispered reply.

"Broken."

The strange sensation tugged at his chest again and he put his hands on her hips.

"You are not broken." He said assuredly. She huffed out a breath, sending an errant strand of hair flying and crossed her arms.

"You have no idea. I have a small one bedroom apartment back home. That's empty, except for a dead plant and a useless bachelor's in business management on the wall. I kill people for a living. I have nightmares almost every night. The longest relationship I had last only a few months and that ended really badly and now I have said way too much." She realized she was ranting for no good reason.

"Maybe a little bent." He conceded. "But not broken." She shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. He angled her head back down to look at him.

"I've seen broken. People with dead eyes and cold bodies, ghost just going through the motions of living. I saw it in the mirror after I left the marines. You still have life and laughter in your eyes. You still have warmth in your body. It's a little awe inspiring after everything you've been through, honestly." He paused. "When we get back I'm gonna punch this guy I keep hearing about in the face for being an idiot."

She smiled and laid her forehead on his. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. I'd gladly knock out any ex's you might have."

"It's a short list, but that's not what I was thanking you for."

"I know." He said and swung his legs back into the hammock. "Now come over here and share some of that warm body." He laid back, arms spread and waggled his eyebrows at her. She smirked down at him and walked under the hammock to get in on the other side. She slung her broken arm low on his stomach and rested her head next to his neck.

"You're not broken either, you know." She murmured sleepily into his shoulder a little while later.

He toyed with her fingers that extended from the cast softly. "Maybe."

"I mean it." She said again against his neck and trapped his fingers with her own. "If I'm not, then by your own definition, then neither are you."

"Alright, fine. I'm twisted and bent up to hell and back, but I'm not broken." _Not anymore,_ he added in his head.

"Right." She nodded and wrapped her leg around his thigh, scooting closer. He wished he was more awake to take advantage of her legs wrapped around his. As it was, all he could do before nodding off was slide a hand on her thigh to keep it where it was. Isabelle watched him through half closed eyes as he fell asleep and wondered if bent people could be fixed. Before she lapsed into thankfully nightmare free sleep, she wondered if the universe sent them here to do just that.


	11. Tangled

**Please, keep those reviews comin. 2. I quietly dropped a clue about who I really am in this one. Just in case anyone was wondering about the alternate identity of the superhero who is writing this. 3. Mind the rating, things get a bit…fun at the end.**

**Survival Skills: Tangled**

_Or the universe was kind of a dick_. Isabelle thought when she woke up alone. She sat up and saw him silently rummaging through the supply sack. The man's ninja skills in stealth impressed still impressed her. He looked up and took the away the silver bag hanging from his mouth as she walked over to him. He had shaved the scruff of hair off his face and she marveled at how little sleep this man needed in order to be functional.

"Good you're up. Here." He handed her the bag. "I've got breakfast today."

"Thanks." She opened the bag that contained a pound cake MRE. "Uh, listen. About last night..."

"Please don't tell me you regret it." Royce said as he stood up and grabbed his weapon, not looking at her.

"Well it's hard not to when I was acting like some weepy teenager."

He looked at her confused for a second before he smiled. "Oh, you're talking about the nightmare. Forget about it."

"I wish I could." She looked up from the pound cake. "Wait. What did you think I was talking about?"

"Nothing." He looked down quickly and walked over to the hearth.

"You thought I was talking about our bath." She smirked, feeling strangely empowered by his sudden embarrassment.

"I.." He stopped for a breath, and then turned to her. "Do you?"

She knew what he was asking and the smirk turned into a soft smile. "I never regret a bath."

His eyes narrowed and slung his weapon behind his back. "How many baths have you had?"

"By myself or with other people?"

"With other people."

"One." She looked up at him playfully. "Although, I was thinking about adding to that number."

He growled and took a step towards her, but a noise from the antechamber halted his approach. Isabelle sighed, cursing Lilith's timing. She would have enjoyed what Royce and his dark eyes were going to do.

"That's Lilith. We usually go hunting about now." She picked up her lever action rifle and headed to the antechamber. Royce rubbed a hand over his face and followed.

Lilith stood in front of the cave and turned as they entered the antechamber. Isabelle stopped near the mikvah and waited for the she creature to finish her perusal of the relief. Lilith glanced behind Isabelle as Royce stepped behind her. Isabelle silently watched the exchange as the only two creatures she trusted on the plant studied each other. The she creature broke her gaze first, nodded at Isabelle and stepped into the darkness of the cave.

"She went in." Isabelle said a little stunned as she stared into the wake of darkness that followed her. The creature almost seemed to be terrified of the cave.

Royce glanced down the darken part of the antechamber before retuning his gaze to her. "So?"

"She's never done that before. What if she knows how to open the other door?" She said almost to herself, still staring into the cave. "We should follow her."

"The curiosity is eating you up, isn't it?" He grinned.

"You're not curious?" She looked up at him and crossed her arms.

"You're inquisitive enough for both of us. So, I'll leave you to it." He started rummaging through his cargo pants pockets.

"What are you going to do?"

"Scouting." Frustration marred his feature as continued to dig through his pockets.

Of course he was. "Well, see if you can't get back before lights out. Okay?"

"I'll do my best." He responded seriously. A smirk formed on his face before he triumphantly pulled out a cylindrical object from his vest pocket.

"Here." She caught the object he tossed to her and discovered it to be a small flashlight.

He unlaced the mask that was tied to his belt and answered the question she didn't ask.

"I pried it off my shotgun. Figured it would light your way better than a torch."

Epiphanies are strange creatures. The smallest, seemingly, most insignificant thing can set the world on fire. A falling apple can lead to the gravitation of the universe. A compass given to a boy can become the theory of special relativity. Isabelle stared down at the tube in her hand and had an epiphany. It was nothing history changing or a benefit to mankind, but it did set her world on fire. She was in love.

The thoughts in her head when he was gone and the wild beat of her heart when here was near all made sense now. Even the arcane nickname she had given him yesterday, which had rolled so easily from her mouth, made her want to smack herself in the face for being so dim. She couldn't tell herself it was a crush or a strange sense of gratitude any more. She felt like a weight she didn't even know she was caring was suddenly lifted only to be replaced by another. Now what? What would he think or do if she told him? Would he run scared off into the trees or worse? What would she do if she scared him off? Didn't he say just last night he wouldn't be scared by anything she said? She wasn't brave enough to test it yet.

"You okay?"

She jerked her head up at his voice. He had walked over to the outside door unaware of her inner struggle and now stood in a streak of dull sunlight shinning through the outside, with a small frown on his face. The alien rifle was slung across his back and his mask hung on his fingers. Cold air rushed up behind her from the cave, brining a fresh smell of dirt. The scene seemed strangely familiar.

"Nothing. Just... a little deja vu." She shook her head.

"What is?" He put his hands on his waist and turned towards her. She waved a hand at him.

"You, standing in the sunlight." She shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant and stepped to him. "Normally I would take the feeling as a good sign, like maybe I am where I'm supposed to be." She reached for his bracer and tucked in a few loose straps.

"But not now?" He asked looking down at her.

"Who knows." She shrugged and took a step back. "But I can think of a lot of better places we could be right now."

"Like where?" He asked unwilling to leave just yet. She tilted her head and looked outside.

"Anyplace with a grocery nearby would be great." She looked back and smiled at him. "How about you?"

He looked into her eyes and saw nothing but curiosity. He fought back the initial knee jerk reaction to tell her to mind her own business. An old self defensive mecinism that seemed to slowly ebb away the more he hung around her. She had done nothing to hurt him and in fact had gone out of her way to help him. It was a simple enough question and on that he had initiated, but still he hesitated.

"There's an old stone cottage with wooden floors near Canyon Lake in Texas." Her eyes grew warm and he felt embolden by it. "I go there at least once a year, to be alone, to be home for awhile. There's always a layer of dust on the tables and chairs that takes me a few days to clean." He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to hers. "The view from the front window is amazing."

"Thank you." She whispered. "I..."

"I gotta go." He said quickly. He kissed her forehead and was gone. He left her with a swirl of dirt, a warm forehead and a renewed desire to get home. She reset the alarm and turned to the cave opening. She was halfway there before she realized she was singing a Shakira song. She shook her head and smiled at her own adolescent reaction. What was that terminology she had heard? Ah, yes. Head over heels. She flicked on the light he gave her and pushed such thoughts to the side as she plunged into the darkness of the cave. Focus is what she needed now.

* * *

_I need to focus._ Royce thought as he stomped through the steaming forest. The rain had finally stopped, but the humidity left him feeling sticky and miserable. He didn't know what kind of femmie spirit had gotten into him earlier, telling her all that stuff about home, but he wouldn't let I happen again. Then he remembered her eyes. Shit, he'd try not to let it happen again. If he wasn't careful he just might fall for the girl and that would not be good. Hell, he was half way there already.

He remembered the last time he fell for a chick. They were all into each other at first, but his job and his own surly nature got in the way. When he came back from missions all he wanted was a beer and nice conversation about what she did while he was gone. Instead she'd pester the shit out of him about where he'd been, what he did, and who he was with. He never lied to the girl, he just wouldn't , couldn't, say anything. In the end she got tired of all the secrets and time away. He could still remember standing confused and hurt in the rain as the taillights from her car faded away.

Still, it felt different with Isabelle. For starters, she already pretty much knew what kind of job he had back home and while she may not be okay with she at least understood. They were both, to use her word, predators. Then there was the way just the smell of her made him hard as a rock. He tried to remember if that was an issue with Lynn or not. Sure, he never got complaints in that department from her, but he was reasonably sure it wasn't as an immediate reaction as just getting a whiff as she walked by. Then there was the way touching Is's hair made him calm and he really needed to FOCUS.

He checked the traps that were scattered in front of the ruins and was happy to find one of them had ensnared a pseudo-rabbit. He cleaned the creature and was on his way back to the ruins to enjoy lunch when he felt the ground shake. He thought it was an earthquake until he heard the throaty boom of an explosion. Fear gripped him as he thought about Isabelle alone with that Lilith thing. Another smaller explosion echoed the first in the opposite direction of the ruins and he sighed in relief.

He climbed a tree to see if he could get a good vantage point and find out where the blasts were coming from. As he climbed he wondered if Is would be impressed by his monkey-like agility, probably not. He reached as high as he was comfortable with climbing and off in the distance a plume of dark smoke rose into the sky. He wished he had Isabelle's scope right now, but she would have it with her when she went into to cave. He briefly thought about going back to the ruins and bringing her with him, but he quickly tossed the idea away. Scouting alone is what he did best. Besides she was opening her door and he knew better than to take that from her. Besides, this could be a wild goose chase. He half slid, half climbed down the tree and made his way towards the smoke.

* * *

_Now what? _Isabelle thought as she found the first metal door still closed and Lilith nowhere in sight. She thought about back tracking and searching the other passages, but then remembered the doors unfortunate tendency to slam shut. The poor creature was probably trapped on the other side of the door. She propped up her rifle on the side and slid the door open with a heavy creek. A bright white light spilled from the metal room and she blinked at the sudden intensity of it. Instinctively she swung herself behind the door, muscles tightening waiting for any threat. A whooshing sound like a fan from the ceiling filled the space and pushed icy air around her. After a few heartbeats she peered cautiously around the door. The metal room was empty, but the door on the other side appeared to be cracked open. Isabelle wedged a rock in between the door and the frame to secure it from closing. She readied her weapon and carefully made her way to the now open second door. She was curious to see what other mischief Lilith was up to, besides finding electricity in an ancient temple.

A quick glance at the floor and ceiling told her that the light was coming from the floor and the sound was indeed coming from a fan in the ceiling. Isabelle pushed the other door with her foot and it swung, grinding on its hinges, open.

The room beyond was dark. _No, not dark, just dimmer than the room she left and a lot colder._ She amended in her head as her eyes adjusted. An eerie red glow from a track of lights led to where Lilith stood ram rod straight next to a rectangular stone slab and slightly shaking. Isabelle glanced over to where Lilith eyes were locked to and did a double take once her brain registered what her eyes saw. Rows and rows of large icy cylinders with blinking lights clung to successive ledges like an amphitheater.

A rumble shook the edges of the room causing dirt to fall to the ground and startled both of the women. Isabelle raised the rifle she had unconsciously lowered up her shoulder turned to get a better look at the rest of the room, wondering what just happened. Lilith let out startled sound and pushed past Isabelle as she ran in fear to the door. Knocked off balance slightly, Isabelle was slow to follow the larger woman. She stepped into the small white metal room just as Lilith pushed through the outer door and Isabelle saw the bracing rock spring free of the door frame.

"Wait!" She yelled and ran to keep the door from closing. Her hand touched the door just as it latched closed. She looked up as the noise from the above fan changed pitched indicating it was slowing. She looked down as the lights in the floor began to fade. In the freezing, now pitch black, alien room Isabelle mumbled "Fuck."

* * *

"Fuck." Royce hissed in surprise. A burning path of destruction cut into the forest leading to what he thought looked a lot like the wreckage of a hunter ship. Of course, he only caught a glimpse of one before he turned around for Isabelle and it blew up. This one wasn't in much better shape than the one he saw, he noted as he kept to the tree line and slowly made his way towards the bulk of the wreckage. The infrared of the mask he wore made it hard to see past the fires that scattered the area, but he was loathed to remove it and break camouflage. At least until he was sure there were no survivors around.

The light from the star this plant circled was beginning to wane as it was covered by another planet. He knew from experience that he would only have a few hours tops until it was completely dark. Being out in this wilderness at night again was not an experience he was hoping to repeat. There were beasts that came out only at night. Although, he didn't see any directly while he was making his way to and from the mining station he heard them and he didn't want to know what something that could make those noises looked like. Beside, eating mutant rabbit meat by a fire, washing off the sweat that trickled down his back and barrying his face in the crazy mane of a small deadly female was infinitely better than trying to shift through debris at night.

He made one slow wide circle of the burning wreckage. When he saw no movement besides the scattered fires and the naturally shifting of debris he decided to call it a night. He hoped could find something useful that could get them home in the morning, he turned to leave the area. A quick red flash hit his peripheral that was too well defined to be a random flare of fire. He crouched quickly, his back to a nearby tree and raised his weapon. He waited for a moment and then waited more. Just when he was beginning to think he was seeing things, he saw the infrared hue of something crawl its way to the wreckage.

Royce could discern its bipedal form as the creature stood up. He silently cursed the masks inability see in anything but obtuse infrared as he studied the figure as it studied the wreckage. The figure was too small to be a hunter, unless they had even smaller versions. There were no wings arcing from the back, so he determined it wasn't Lilith and it was too big to be Isabelle. Part of him said to shoot first ask questions later, another part told him to just walk away and still another, that irritatingly had a female voice with an accent, told him to wait and see. He decided to find out what it was then leave. He could always shoot it later.

He silently pulled further into the darkness of the underbrush. He made sure he was up wind and pushed up the mask. The cloak crackled off and the creature spun towards the soft noise. The movement brought it into the firelight and Royce was surprised to see the face of a man. Royce held his breath and stilled his movements as the man scanned the area with his eyes. The man turned back to the rubble and Royce breathed again.

The man was average height and average build. His hair was long and shagging down into his face where it joined a long ZZ Top beard. His clothes consisted of animal hides and his feet were bare. Royce half expected the man to limp up to him whisper "It's" in his face and have the Monty Python theme suddenly blare out of nowhere.

Royce thought about making his presence known, but wasn't too excited to explain who he was or to bring back another survivor to the ruins. He thought Isabelle would be better at a meet and greet anyway. He'd drag her out here in the morning and if the dude was gone they'd track him down and ask him a few questions. Royce halted his thought process as the man slid stealthy into shadows.

Royce pushed the mask down on his face in time to see a red blob flying down to him. He fell to his back and jerked his weapon up in time to defect a rock that would have smashed in his skull. Royce's wind was knocked out of him as the weight of the man landed on his mid section and large hands attempted to choke the life out of him. He countered with a few well placed jabs to the man's kidneys. In the short wrestling matched that followed Royce's mask fell off and he could clearly see the man's wild eyes for the first time. A quick thrust of the butt of his weapon to the man's face ended the match. Royce stood up from the wet ground, breathing hard and looked down at the unconscious body before him.

There was no intelligence in the man's eyes, at least not the human kind. His eyes were as wild and feral; if there was a man behind them, it was buried deep. There was no way he was bringing Isabelle anywhere near this animal. Besides he doubted this guy would even be able to understand an asked question, let alone answer it. Royce slipped the mask back on his face and imitated the cloak. He walked away, unsure if it was the best idea to leave a man that was ready to kill him alive, but unwilling to kill the defenseless man on the ground. He wondered when that had ever been a problem for him before.

* * *

After giving up on forcing the closed door open, Isabelle switched on the light Royce had given her and entered the larger room. She hoped to find a back door or at least something she could wrap around herself. It was freezing in here. The beam of light hit a dusty white stone floor as she awkwardly held it and her rifle. A few paces from the door was a rectangle of stone that reach almost to her shoulders. It reminded her of a tall breakfast nook. The top was flat, bare and dusty. She shrugged her shoulders at the oddity and continued her search. She brought the light back up to the cylinders and saw that not all of the power of the place was out. Lights on a panels of most of the cylinders still blinked on and off faintly.

She walked slowly to the closest cylinder, feeling like character in an American horror movie. She had been guilty of thinking the character walking into an obvious trap was an idiot a time or two. She took a breath and decided to complete the cliché. She reached up and touched the cylinder with fingers of her cast laden arm. Her fingers met cold condensation on a glass surface. She juggled the light and rifle to the other arm and wiped the condensation away with her good hand. The murky outline of a face greeted her and she stepped back in surprise.

_What was it about his place and dead bodies_? She thought, just as the dead body twitched.

"Filho da punta!" She flinched backward in surprise and raised her rifle to the face behind the glass. She willed her pounding heart to slow as she waited to see what the thing in the tube would do. After a few tense moments of no movement she lowered her weapon, whatever had caused the thing to twitch had stopped. She inspected the cylinder better and saw tubes branching off the top reach up into the darkness the light did not penetrate. A thick layer of dust and dirt covered the canister. Another tube coming from the bottom of the tube ran in to the stone floor. A crack on the side it allowed a clear fluid to trickled out and down to the floor. She could see no seem and no way to open the cylinder, not that she wanted to. The condensation covered the glass, obscuring the face. She did not wipe the surface again.

She stepped back and shined the light down the rows of canisters. She followed the line they made and noted various states of atrophy in the machinery. Some of the canisters had fallen to the side resting on their neighbor, while others had fallen head first to the ground. Many of the light panels were dark and other panels flicked on and off seemingly at random. The long line of canisters seemed to go on forever as she continued to walk shivering past them.

After what felt like hours of walking her light reflected back on circular stone structure in the middle of her path. She stared at the mason construction for a second, cold numbing her brain, before it clicked. The dimensions seemed to be right for her fishing pool, or at least one of the lower pools. Tubes jutted out from the side and ran up to the darkened roof. Had she been fishing in frozen people juice all this time? It was not a comforting thought. A shiver ran up her spine and her teeth chattered together. Her light dimmed indicating it was time to turn around. A quick glance around the structure showed more canisters. She turned away from the mystery underground silo and made her way with the dying light back to the entrance.

Feeling relatively secure, she shoved her hands under her armpits to warm them while haphazardly maintaining control of the light and rifle. She puzzled over the purpose of the building. What were these things behind the glass? They had faces, but she couldn't tell if they were humanoid or not. Were they dead or in a kind of stasis? What did Lilith have to do with it? Maybe Royce would have a few ideas. Which lead her into another round of question regarding just him. Mercifully she came to the entrance and had to change mental gears long enough to figure out how to not freeze to death.

He options were limited, to say the least. She tugged the door to the strange room until it was almost closed hoping to keep out most of the cold. She gave the cave door a few futile pushes before sighing in defeat. She set her rifle down next to the closed door and wondered how long it would take Royce to figure out where she was. He managed to find her when she was whisked away by a flying she creature, _after_ she fell down the side of a mountain. This should be a piece of cake. Her broken arm ached from the cold and her fingers were going numb. She fingered the Quick-clot she still kept in her pocket. She knew it cauterized wounds, but she suspected it was a chemical cauterization not a heat induced one. She was tempted to pop it open here on the floor if it meant warmth for a few seconds, though.

She sighed and slid down the door. She smiled knowing the first thing Royce would see when he finally got there would be her tumbling at his feet. The light flickered and she saw the stain of blood on the wall next to her. She shut off the light and wound her arms into her shirt for a little bit of protection and warmth it offered. She wondered sleepily if it had been this way for the mummified cowboy she found a week earlier. Did he give up early or did he sit in this room and wait for someone who would not come to open the door? She liked to think he didn't give up hope even as he tucked the picture he could barely see of his loved one into his pocket and heaved the rifle up to his head. She turned off the light and pondered over her and the cowboy's similar fate. Would her own numb fingers be strong enough to pull the trigger in lieu of starvation? Royce was a smart man, he would figure out where she was before that became an issue thankfully. Once again, she felt sorry for the dead man. He had no Royce somewhere outside, just a picture and a rifle. He had to face death alone here with little hope of survival. A shiver ran through her and she tucked her legs in closer to her body.

She thought about Royce and her earlier realization. She almost blurted out "I love you" before he cut her off and ran. It was probably a good thing he did that. He wasn't the 'declare undying love' type. She could almost imagine the look of panic in his face before he schooled his feature and told her he wasn't that kind of man. Blurting out how she felt was out, she'd just have to show him until he was ready to hear it or maybe just until she was ready to say it. She smiled and laid her head down on her knees. She was such a coward. Her eyes drooped closed. Shit, she was tired.

* * *

_Shit, he was tired. _He thought as he walked to the entrance of the ruins and a yawn escaped. He stopped dead in his tracks and raised his weapon. Sticks scattered the entrance to the wide open rock door. The alarm had been sprung. He ran up to the side of the opening and slammed his back to the rock face. A quick duck and scan of the antechamber told him it was dark inside and nothing else.

"IS?" He yelled in, still keeping his back to the outside wall. His own voice echoed back to him and silence followed. The hope that she had accidentally set off the trap and had not reset it yet ebbed away as the silence lengthened. He took in a fortifying breath and pushed inside the building, ready for another fight. Silence and a faint glow flowing from the smaller room greeted him. He pushed himself against the wall and edged his way along the wall towards the light. The two torches that Isabelle usually kept lit were burnt out. Another tactical glance into the room also came up empty. He swung into the empty room and crinkled his brow in confusion. The fire in the hearth was down to embers and there were no signs of a struggle or any other indication that anyone had been in here for hours. He stirred the embers, put on a few more logs and lit up another torch. He swung weapon to his back and walked back into the main room.

He stood and surveyed the room with torch in hand for a moment. He walked to the door and saw his own steps in the mud outside, two claw prints of Lilith and a day old set of Isabelle's. He squatted down and suspiciously inspected Lilith's prints closer. She left in a hurry, almost immediately lifting into the air as soon as she was clear of the door. The prints where too light for her to be carrying anything and an image of the she-creature carting off an unwilling Isabelle vanished as soon as it came. Unless Isabelle felt the strange need to cover her tracks, she didn't leave the ruins today. He walked to the pool and splashed water on his face. He jerked his head up as he suddenly remembered her saying something about a man being trapped in a room.

"Shit." He mumbled as he wiped the water from his eyes. He jogged down to the cave entrance, torch in hand. He easily followed the trail of shells until he came to the closed metal door. Dropping the torch on the ground, he unlatched and opened the door with a grunt. A small body fell to the ground at his feet, followed by his stomach. He dropped down to his knees in front of her and grabbed the edges of the door frame as the heavy door slammed him in the back. _Fu__c__kin door._ He pushed it back and brought his free hand to her head, almost afraid to touch her.

"Is?"

She heard her name off in the distance. The cold was everywhere and she just wanted to sleep, but she felt warm hands on her face and neck. Confused, she looked up and saw the concerned face of Royce.

"Wh..wh..where hhhhave you bbbeen?" Her teeth chattered and she tried to smile to hide it, but she didn't think she succeeded. Still, Royce smiled back at her so it must not have been too bad.

"Sorry. I've been busy. How 'bout we get you out of the fridge?"

She nodded her head and cringed as the pins and needles started stabbing her arms and legs, as she tried to unwind herself. Royce, mindful of the pain she displayed, shoved the torch in her numb hands.

"Do you think you can carry this?"

She didn't think she could, but nodded anyway. Her numb achy fingers gripped the torch as he slid his arms under her and easily lifted her into his arms. He turned to begin the long walk back to the front of the ruins.

"Rifffle." She said before turning her head and buried her freezing nose into the opening of his vest. He sucked in a surprised breath at the sudden cold on his chest and spotted her rifle inside the small metal room.

"I'll come back for it. You know, you don't have to half freeze to death if you want me to carry you somewhere. Just ask next time, I'll be glad to oblige." He said to her as he walked away. He felt her chuckle in his arms.

"I'll keep tttthat in mmmind."

The door behind them slammed shut.

* * *

He brought her to the small room in front of the ruins, stood her in front of the fire and began to unceremoniously remove her clothes.

"I tttthink I'm ttto cold for ttthis rightt now." She stuttered. He smirked, focusing on removing her frosty outerwear. Her sense of humor seemed to be intact, that was good.

"Here. Sit down." He guided her to a piece of hide on the floor and she immediately balled up. He grabbed more hides that littered the room and covered her with them.

Isabelle watched shivering as he coaxed the dying fire alive. Satisfied the fire was warm enough he sat down in front of her, fished out one of her feet and began to massage warmth back into it. She had buried herself into the furs until just her face shone from underneath. She looked cute and instead of commenting on it he said.

"I snagged one of those huge rabbit things today, so dinner's covered."

"I'm sorry." She said quietly, happy there was only a small amount of teeth chatter that time.

He looked up at her confused. "Sorry for what?"

"Well for being a burden, I guess. I think this makes about the sixth or seventh time you've saved my life. Have I said thank you for that?" She said honestly, biting back the half-pain half-pleasure moan that wanted to come out as his warm hand massaged blood back into her foot.

He shrugged and looked back down at her warming foot. "Don't worry about it. We're even."

The furs shifted as she shook her head. "We are nowhere close to being even."

He put her now warmed foot under the furs and fished out the other for the same treatment. "Trust me we're even." He said and looked up in time to see her face scrunch up.

"I.." She began.

"Something crashed in the forest." He interrupted.

She forgot what she was going to say and sat up a little straighter, careful not to let her foot slide out of his hands.

"What crashed? Was that the tremor I felt earlier? What did you see?"

He smirked a little at her excited questions and told her about what had happened today. He put her other foot away at the end of his story.

"You've had a busy day, haven't you?" She blinked.

"Yup." He said, bringing out her cast laden arm.

"So you just let this man go after he attacked you?"

"Yeah. The thing is.." He stopped.

"What?" She encouraged.

"Any kind of human thought or emotion was gone from this guy. He is in complete animal survival mode now." He kept his eyes on her hand. "And that's why we're even."

"I don't follow." She said wanting to be sure she heard right. He blew hot air on her free fingers and she curled them around his.

"Well I figure if you weren't around I'd either be talking to myself or stalking around like a bear. Either way, I may have saved your life a few times, but you save my sanity every day."

Unbidden tears welled up in her eyes. "That may be the nicest thing anyone has said to me."

He looked up at her statement. "That's the nicest th...?" He broke off and shook his head. He wove her hand back under the furs and stood up. "I'm gonna cook the rabbit thing and reset the alarm. I expect you to be nice and warm when I get back and you can tell me how you got stuck back there. Alright?" He said, looking down at her.

"Yes, sir." She smirked at him.

He nodded and paused at the door to look back at the fur encompassed Isabelle, before shaking his head again and leaving.

He came back an hour later to find her by the fire still snuggled in the furs asleep. He let her sleep for awhile while he cooked the meat in the fire.

"He cooks too? I'm doomed." He heard her sleepy timbre behind him and smiled.

"It's still gonna be a few minutes. So...How was your day?" He sat next to her as she pushed herself up and told him about the containers.

"We both had busy days." He handed her a piece of meat and they ate in silence for awhile.

"Bedtime?" She looked over at him sideways when he yawned.

"Past." He said simply, staring into the fire.

"Well I think I'm going to bunk down here next to the fire." She said tossing a bone into the fire and snuggled back down again.

"Still cold?"

"Pieces of me."

He grunted and dragged his weapon closer before lying down behind her. She turned her head in profile to him.

"You don't have to stay down here. I'm sure it's much more comfortable in the hammock."

"Is?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up." He said and put an arm around her waist.

"You're such a romantic." She smiled and turned back to the fire. She felt his chuckle on her back. Oh, yeah. No doubt at all she was in love. She laid there suddenly wide awake, contemplating the events of the day

"Why are you still awake?" Royce grumbled after a while.

"Tell me about your house again?" She whispered back to him, unsure why or where the question came from.

"Why?"

She shrugged. "I just want to know."

"There's not much to tell."

"Impossible man."

He sighed and for a second she thought he would refuse.

"There's a huge old oak tree out front I use to climb as a kid." He began. "It's got a tire swing on it. There's a garden out back where my mother would plant some vegetables. Dad built a swing for her so she had a place to sit and look at it."

She turned and faced him.

"He loved her." She stated simply.

"Too much." He said with sadness in his eyes. "Can we sleep now?"

"Not yet." She let her fingers trail down his cheek and kissed him.

She tasted his mouth much like she did that first time in the forest, like she was savoring it. He decided he could kiss this woman forever. She pulled back and he saw a familiar sparkle in her eyes. She pushed him to his back and she straddled his waist. He put his hands on her thighs and looked up at her a smile tugging on his lips.

She leaned down to him, her breath on his chin. "Tell me more."

"I think I remember this game."

She smiled in reply and waited expectantly.

"There's a small grocery store nearby I walk to in the spring." He began and she placed her first kiss on his neck.

"It gets hot in the summer and..." He trailed off as her lips made their way down his chest. She paused and looked up at him, raising an eyebrow at the lag in his story. "Um.. I usually jump into the lake to cool off."

She made her way down and thoroughly enjoyed the way his abs twitched on her tongue. She looked up again when she felt his hand on her head. His eyes were closed.

"No touching." She nodded his hand gently away.

He looked down at her sharply. "New rules?"

"New game."

Her eyes were dark and he did something he hadn't done in a while, he trusted someone. He put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes again. "I think I like your games."

"Keep going." She smirked.

"San Antonio is nearby and...Shit." He lost his train of thought when she got on her knees between his legs and pulled his boxer briefs off.

"And?" She prompted, rubbing her fingers on his bare thighs. And? And what? What was he talking about? Oh, right. "We'll go to the river walk and you can see the leaves turn in the fall. The cottage gets drafty in the winter so we'll... oh God." He moaned as she licked him once from root to tip.

"We'll drink hot cocoa as we lounge in bed." She finished, easily envisioning the scene.

"Yeah." He swallowed. Then there was no more talking as she took him fully in her mouth. He writhed when she cupped his balls and he panted loudly when her tongue circled under his head. He tried to slow down and enjoy it. He tried to memorize every swirl of her tongue, every graze of her teeth and he managed it for awhile until he felt her lay her palm on his chest over his heart. He called out a warning to her, but she just increased the pressure and he exploded.

He swallowed hard and looked down at her with hot eyes. She licked her lips and sat back on her knees. He never wanted to touch someone so bad in his life, but he remembered her rules.

She was throbbing and aching for him now that she had tasted him. She looked down and saw watched his fist clench and unclench at his sides.

"What?" She asked hesitantly. Had she done something wrong?

"Can I touch now?"

"Yes." Was that the problem? She didn't have time to contemplate it as he swiftly sat up and took her mouth. With one hand in her hair and one on her waist he twisted them until she lay beneath him on the furs. He broke away and brought her arms over her head.

"Wanna play a game?" He smirked over her.

"What do you want me to talk about?" She smirked back, lacing her fingers behind her head.

"I don't want you to talk about anything. I want you to moan." He explored her body with his mouth and she did more than just moan. She sighed as his lips latched on to a breast and giggled when his hand ghosted over a ticklish spot on her side. That had earned her a full toothed smile from him. She felt self conscious as he lowered, but forgot about it when he placed a single open mouthed kiss on the scar on her leg. Then she forgot about her own rules and held his head right where she needed him to be, after a single slow lick up her center. Afterward, as he crawled back up her and pulled the furs around them she said. "You may be the death of me, ahuvi_."_

_"_There's that word again. I hope it means something good."

"It does to me."

Outside, strange monsters roamed the night looking for prey, steering clear of the dying fires from a crash. A wild man crawled into his dark and foul smelling hole under a tree and nursed his broken face. Lilith looked up from her perch and saw a familiar dreaded light float silently to the ground. It was unusually early but it seemed that a hunt would begin again soon. Inside, two humans slept to the crackle of a fire, warm, safe and tangled in each other.


	12. Improbabilities and Dreams

**I was thinking about wearing a sign that says 'Will write for reviews', but I might get strange looks. 2. Lots of dialog in this. Completely unintentional. 3. Royce quotes Dante's Inferno and references The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Who knew he is so well read?**

** Survival Skills: Improbabilities and Dreams**

Isabelle woke up alone again the next morning. At this point she was more frustrated at herself than at him. She never thought of herself as a heavy sleeper before, but apparently she was. He had left his weapon next to her head, so he was still in the building somewhere. She got dressed, grabbed the weapon and headed into the antechamber. He wasn't here either. Shrugging she walked over the mikvah and washed her face and hair in the warm water. She heard footsteps and saw fire light from the corner of her eye. Royce emerged from the darkness of the cave with a torch in one hand and her rifle in the other.

"I had the strangest dream last night." She said by way of greeting, as she ran the warm water down her arms. He responded with a grunt and she took it as a sign to continue.

"I was standing in a field somewhere. Just standing there and a woman and her lion came up. She gave me a glass of wine and we had a nice long conversation about something important, but I can't remember what." She shook her head and stood up. "It feels something's going to happen soon."

"Woman's intuition's is usually right. You'll need this then." He said as held her rifle up to her. They switched guns and she inspected her rifle.

"Why do you get the gun that can blow a hole in the side of a wall and I get the two hundred year old lever action?" She frowned.

"Because I'm," he pointed at himself, "brute force and you're," he pointed at her, "finesse." She nodded at his accurate assessment.

"That is said." He swung an under her butt and picked her up to him, laying a kiss on her. Her legs locked around his waist and her arms slid around his neck, her rifle dangled down his back by one hand. She pulled back long enough to murmur "Brute" and tangle her fingers in his hair before plunging back in for more.

The door alarm rattled to the floor and they froze, mouths still connected. Brown and hazel eyes widened and met for a fraction of a second. Royce spun them, Isabelle still held close and they raised their weapons awkwardly towards the door. She unwrapped her legs slowly and slid down to stand beside him. A growl sounded outside the door as they waited tensely. An ugly mass of hair darted inside the door and back outside again before either of them had a chance to fire.

"It's Hairy." Royce said tersely.

"Who?" She kept her rifle aimed at the spot where she had seen the head as Royce advanced slowly to the door.

"The guy from yesterday."

"How did he find us?"

"I'll ask." He said just before he plunged through the open door. She swore as she heard the sound of a scuffle outside. Before she could make outside to see what was going on, a wild furry mass flew through the door and landed at her feet. Royce paced back inside, a line of blood trickling down his cheek and fury in his eyes. The man scrambled back into the corner fearfully as Royce advanced on him. Royce gave the man a sharp kick in the side.

"Who are you?" He growled at him and kicked him again. The man grunted and cowered further into the corner.

"Hang on, let me try something." She ducked into the other room and emerged a second later with a scrap of meat in her hand.

"Stay back." He kept his eyes at the man.

"Royce..."

"He's dangerous. Look what he did to my face."

"Finesse, Royce." He looked over at her finally. "This is one of those times we need finesse."

He waved at the other man and took a few steps back. She crouched down until she was eye level and extended the meat out to the man.

"My name's Isabelle." She said soothingly. "I'm not going to hurt you. Do you understand?" She tried again in Spanish and Portuguese, when the man made no response.

"This isn't going to work." Royce said behind her.

"It might." She said without looking away and eased a little closer. She wiggled the meat in her fingers. "Here. Take it."

"That's right." She said as the man uncoiled warily. The man snatched the meat away from her hand and shoved it into his mouth.

"See." She smiled smugly back at Royce and he rolled his eyes.

The man lunged at her while she was turned away, grabbing a hand full of hair and pulling it to his face. Before she had the chance to utter "ow" Royce had the man up against the wall.

"Mine." He growled into the man's face. She stood and put a hand on his arm.

"I'm fine, alpha dog. I don't think he did it to hurt me."

He gave the other man a shove and let go, stepping back. He was unnerved by the sudden spurt of jealously of another man touching her and his fist clenched together at his side... The man crouched back down and slid back into the corner. She looked down at him for a second before looking back up at Royce.

"I don't think he's going to be much help. At least not for awhile."

"Good then we can get rid of him."

"Royce." She warned.

"Not like that." Not that he didn't want to break the man in half and added to himself. He was about to explain when Lilith tumbled inside. Three human eyes watched as the she-creature slid down something that looked like a trident to her knees on the floor. Isabelle was the first to react and ran over to her. She saw dark blood oozing from a wound in her side.

"She's hurt." She said even as she put a hand over the wound to stop the bleeding.

"Let's get her to the other room." Royce said and appeared at her side. He hesitantly placed an arm around the larger woman and the two of them maneuvered her into the room. From the corner of Isabelle's eye she saw the wild man ducking back into the corner again.

Lilith began speaking wildly as they sat her down. Royce handed Isabelle some cloth to cover the wound on her side and stepped back to the door, keeping an eye on both of their guests. Isabelle tried to calm the almost frantic Lilith down as she wrapped the cloth around the other woman. Lilith huffed shook of Isabelle and strode up to Royce, who instinctively recoiled backward, and pointed to the mask on his side. Then she pointed to the wound at her side and the two humans finally understood.

Royce and Isabelle eyes connected across the room as Lilith leaned tiredly against the wall. He spun and edged his way to the door careful to keep out of line of fire from the open door. Isabelle was close behind him.

"They probably followed her." He whispered to her as they both stepped around the huddled mass of human in the corner. The man grasped at her pant leg as she passed and Isabelle waved him away, her mind on more pressing matters. Royce scanned the outside quickly and ducked back inside.

"Anything?" She asked already know what the answer was going to be.

"No." He sighed and put his head back against the wall. She watched him swallow.

"What are you thinking?"

"I didn't see any chutes yesterday."

"Okay." She started hesitantly, trying to put the pieces together. "No chutes, but a crashed ship and now more hunters."

"There's a war going on." He looked over at her.

"You said no one survived the crash."

"I said I didn't see any survivors." He corrected.

"Great." She sighed. "So that means what?"

"I don't think we're the ones being hunted at the moment." He turned back to the door.

"Well good. We can just let them kill each other off while we keep our heads down."

"They tagged your friend. Once they're done with business, they're gonna want to finish what they started. They'll come here."

"Okay. Then what...No." She said as he reached for the mask at his side and she realized what he intended.

"We can't sit in here and wait for them to decide to clean house. I'm just gonna have a look around." He said calmly.

"What if they're not chasing down their brethren? What if they're out there with their guns aimed at the door waiting to vaporize the first thing that comes out?"

"It's possible." He put the mask on the top of head. She ground her teeth at his answer.

"Can we just close the door put a few traps and see if there's another way out, first?"

"Then what Is? We run, we hide and what? Maybe we survive long enough to start talking to ourselves or worse. I can't sit here and have them pick us off one by one. I can't." He finished staring intently into her eyes.

"I'll come with you." She sighed.

"No. I have an idea, how about we send Hairy out first? That way we can maybe pinpoint where they are as they take him out." He said quickly cutting off the argument coming out of her.

She looked at him sharply, but saw the smirk on his face and knew he was kidding. She hoped he was kidding, anyway.

"Maybe next time." She shook her head and watched him as he glanced outside again. "I can't just sit here waiting for you."

"There's only one cloak. There's no time to argue about this. I'm going, you're staying."

She let out a stuttering breath; she recognized the stubborn glint in his eyes.

"Well don't come back here shot to hell and expect me to fix you up."

"Course not." A smile twitched on his face and he pulled her into a kiss. Someone nudged at Isabelle's side and they broke apart. They looked down at the man.

"Maybe I should take this guy with me. I don't trust him with you, he's dangerous."

"Believe it or not, I'm not a damsel in distress." She arched a brow. "Beside Lilith's is here and... where did she go?"

She looked back to find the woman missing.

"She must have gone in to the cave. She was in there with full lights before maybe she saw another way out that I didn't." She looked back at Royce. "Before you jump into the fire, we should go and see."

"Is..."

"If there is a back door you can circle around behind them a lot easier." She reasoned. "It's worth a shot."

He sighed, it was a better idea than the one he had. Mainly because the one he had mostly just consisted of getting all bad guys away from here. Which meant it was a shitty plan.

"Okay. I'll get the door. You make sure your buddy hasn't bled to death on her way out."

She smiled triumphantly and slipped back into the smaller room. A few moments later she emerged, a quiver of arrows at her side, a belt half full of bullets, a sniper rifle slung on her back, a bow on her shoulder, a lever action rifle in her hands and her dark hair up in a ponytail. Royce had the urge to bow down before the goddesses of war in front of him.

"You're right behind me, right?"

He thought 'always' but said. "You bet."

She nodded once and folded herself back into the shadows of the antechamber. The stranger made a move to follow her and Royce pulled him back by the filthy hide the wild man wore as a shirt.

"No, no, you stay here with me." He said and pushed him back behind him against the wall. Royce then spent the next few minutes securing the door as best he could with the objects at hand. Then pulled Hairy into the other room and filled a bag of supplies as the man wandered around the room.

"Here, make yourself useful." He pushed the bag into Hairy's arms and pulled him by the collar of his shirt back into the antechamber. Royce then set up a trap on the door that would not do a lot of damage, but it would make a hell of a lot of noise and hopefully mess with the hunter's heat vision. When he was finished he looked over at Hairy who had seemed to relax a little in his presence and waited patiently in the corner.

"Alright," He said to him and the man looked up. "Let's go find Is."

Royce walked to the cave. He looked back and saw the man following quietly behind him. He was walking upright, his arms around the bulky bag, his eyes wide curiously taking in the surroundings. Royce turned back and wondered if maybe there might be a little bit of a human left in him. He didn't know what kind of crap the man had been through or how long he'd been here, but maybe soon he'd be able to tell them. That didn't mean he wouldn't punch the guy's face in if he tried any crap on Is again.

The door was wedged open by a rock, the fan and lights were on by the time the two men got there. Hairy crouched again, a sign Royce was beginning to think was a defense mechanism, and gripped the bag tightly to his chest. Royce stepped through the tiny room into the larger one and the man followed quietly behind him. Royce raised his weapon up and took in the scene of chaos around him once his eyes adjusted to the bright lights.

Gray skinned bald bipeds roamed the massive chamber listlessly and shakily. Many lay in quivering masses on the floor, while a pitiful moan and metallic screech echoed throughout the room. On the ground before him lay one of the beings, a dark fluid oozing from the slit of its mouth. A strange panic filled him and it became an effort not to run away. His jaw tightened as he began to carefully step around the unarmed and naked beings in search for Isabelle. One of them bumped into him blindly and fell boneless to the ground. Royce waited to see if the other creatures would respond to the fall, but they did nothing. He looked back and saw Hairy cowering wide eyed near the door, he didn't blame him. Turning back he saw two of the creatures bumped accidentally into each other, pause, and then embrace. He stepped past the creatures as they fell to the ground, long skinny arms entwined. He paused a second at the stone slab in the middle of the walkway, recognizing Lilith's trident plunged into the top and stepped around it. This whole place made zero sense to him at the moment.

He saw the larger form of Lilith first, as she sat with her back to the door, her wings uncomfortably arranged around her. She clutched at her side and stared unseeingly ahead. He followed her gaze and found Isabelle kneeling in front of one of the creatures, its long fingers resting on her face. She sat in profile to him, but he could see a glazed expression in her eyes and blood running from her nose. She gasped and began to shake violently at whatever the thing was doing to her. He quickly crossed the distance, equally angry and fearful of the scene.

"Let her go." He said menacingly, pointing his gun down at the creature. Isabelle said his name weakly, the creature still held a hand to her face. He came closer about to shoot the creature in the head when he heard Isabelle's voice strengthen.

"Wait, Ahuvi, wait." She reached up blindly and he crouched down beside her, keeping his eyes on the creature. Not many things would have stopped him from killing the creature that seemed to be hurting her, but his new nickname from her lips was one of them. Her searching hand found his forearm and gripped him hard for a second then went slack. The thing released its grip, closed its black eyes and fell back to the ground. She slumped over and only his quick reflects spared her from hitting the floor. He slipped an arm around her and maneuvered the half unconscious woman to sit up against the stone slab he had passed earlier. He looked around and noted that the creatures were embracing each other with more frequency and intent then before. He looked back at Isabelle and found her gaze on him.

"What the hell is going on?" He whispered agitatedly at her. The creatures seemed to be getting their shit together and that may not be a good thing.

"I don't know where to begin." She wiped at the blood trickling down her face.

"Try from where you left me." He frowned at the sight of her blood staining her shirt. "Hairy!"

He turned to where he had last seen the wild man and found only the bag of supplies. He stood to see around the block of stone and was annoyed to find the door to the cave shut and Hairy missing.

"I'll be right back." He said down to her and walked calmly over to the bag. The panic he had felt earlier was receding only to be replaced by confusion. He didn't feel particularly threatened by the creatures, which was odd, most things on this planet threatened him. He still dodged them if they came too close though. He found some cloth and an extra shirt in the bag and made his way back to Isabelle.

He knelt down in front of her, handed her the shirt and began to clean the blood from her face. One of the few creatures that weren't actively hugging another creature tripped over his foot. Royce merely glanced back annoyed for a second and turned back to Isabelle.

"You better?" He waited for her to nod, and then added. "Alright, what are these things? And why are they so non-threatening that it's almost threatening?" He scrunched his eyes together. "Did that make sense?"

"Yes." She said as she wove her arms through the smelly but warm shirt. "They use touch to speak to others minds and I think some of their feelings might leak out without touching."

"Great, that's..." he searched for the word, "weird."

"Yeah and I just got a lesson in their history from that gentleman over there." She waved a hand to the creature that had touched her face and was now being propped up by some of the others. "Do you want the full version or the abridged?"

"We'll go with the abridged for now."

"I came in just in time to see most these guys falling out of their containers and one of them hanging onto Lilith for dear life. I had about the same reaction as you, only when he let go of Lilith he grabbed me.

They're planet, this planet, was unable to sustain them any longer. So they made this place, tossed some seeds around the world, made a guardian race to protect them, set a time limit, and then went to sleep. Only something went wrong and they weren't woken up."

"What went wrong?"

"The hunters came and most of the protectors got killed off until it was just Lilith's family. Her family got too busy trying to stay alive and forgot about the people sleeping here. Lilith remembers stories from her grandmother about sleeping creatures underground that would change everything. It's weird seeing her memories from the mind of another."

"I bet." He said, not really know what she was talking about.

"Oh and there is another way out. You can thank me later."

"I'll thank you now, because Hairy just ran out and closed both doors."

"I hate that door." She mumbled to herself and laid her throbbing head back against the slab. The second the being touch her face it felt like her brain was on fire. Then suddenly she found herself standing in a white room, without pain or fear. She thought she might be dead for second, but she spotted the same creature that touched her standing in a flowing red robe on the other side of the room. Off to the side a male lion lounged, sleepily. In retrospect, she knew the purpose of the white room was meant to be a retrieve from the brain melting information she was about to receive. Although she wasn't sure what the lion had to do with anything.

She was about to ask where she was when a rush of images, sounds and emotion painfully clawed into her head. Thinking back on it seemed like a movie in fast forward, but she could understand and feel everything that was happening. The painful history lesson was broken up into much needed breaks in the room. In between lessons, the lion would nudge her occasionally with its head as she gasped for air. She thought that maybe a bit of her earlier dream had seeped its way into this little nightmare. Whatever the reason she was grateful for the animals soothing prescience.

The movie slowed as the sleepers slept and she was once again back in the room. Then suddenly, she felt herself being pulled in two different directions at once. Part of her was in the room and part of her was outside looking at a very irate and worried Royce. In the room the robed man knelt down to look her in the eyes and she knew there was more she needed to see. She heard own voice as she tried to calm Royce down, but she felt disconnected from it. She reached out needing to find an anchor and felt the warmth of his arm on her hand. Lilith's memories filled her head second hand and slower making these images much easier to take. At the end of them she saw herself and found it extremely disconcerting to really and truly _know_ what someone thought about you. The white room receded and was replaced by the cold dark one she had originally entered. She was happily alone in her head, but her knees and head were killing her.

The two humans watched from the stone ground, as the creatures that could stand began to tend to those that couldn't. Isabelle looked over to see Lilith, slightly dazed, also watching the movement. The blood from the wound on her side had saturated through her haphazard bandage and had begun to drip down her side. Mumbling an explicative Isabelle slid over to the wounded creature.

"Let me check your bandage." She said to her and saw a surprised expression on her face.

"What?" She looked around and saw Royce crouching besides her with a similar expression.

"What language was that?"

"English. Why? What did it...oh, wait." She looked between the two of them as realization dawned on her. She glanced down at the creature that had recently been in her head.

"I guess I got a little more than just memories." She said quietly, disturbed that her brain had been so easily scrambled and she wondered what else might be in there now.

Royce stood and scrubbed his face with a sigh. "Great. Okay, so. Dropped on an alien planet." He began to tick off fingers. "Hunted by a super strong and ugly alien race. A flying she-alien." He motioned to Lilith, while maintaining count with his fingers. "An ancient temple with a great hammock and fireplace. A just awoken up physic race of gooey aliens." He began to pace, agitation rolling off him. "A downed hunter ship and an opposing faction scout party hunting the survivor. And now you can speak an alien language. Did I miss anything?"

She looked worriedly at him and stood slowly. "Are you okay? You're not..." she paused searching for the right phrase in English, "freaking out are you?"

"I'm just wondering about the odds. Because if this is as improbable as it seems then the Heart of Gold should be picking us up any second now."

"Hitchhiker's Guide? I love that book."

Her simple statement took him by surprise and shook the odd thoughts out of his head. "Ignore me. What now?"  
She eyed him speculatively.

"Really, I'm fine."

"Okay, I don't..." She was cut off by loud rhythmic pounding coming from the door. The creatures began to quickly scurry from the door, some dragging the fallen with them. Isabelle and Royce stood side by side facing the door each remembering the last time a pounding like that came from the other side of a door.

"It could be Hairy." Isabelle said.

"Probably not. Where's this other way out?" He said and aimed his gun at the door. Isabelle followed suit and nodded back to the room.

"Remember those fishing pools in the side of the mountain? One has a lift in it; we just have to drain the water. Couldn't tell you if it still works."

The pounding stopped and they glanced at each other.

"That's troubling." Royce said.

Dirt fell from the ceiling to the floor from the impact of an explosion that rocked the chamber. The creatures began to retreat in earnest and the humans ducked behind the stone slab, weapons raised. Lilith slid in behind them, removed the trident from the slab and the lights dimmed. They waited silently as tense weapons aimed down in the direction of the door. The dust settled and they saw that the door still stood firmly, if a bit charred around the edges, in place.

"_That_ door I don't mind too much." Isabelle said.

"It's not gonna hold forever. Time to go." Royce said and Isabelle nodded in agreement. He slid quietly to the bag of supplies by the door and gathered it up. He heard Isabelle mumble something to Lilith in the odd new language. He turned to see Lilith stumbled to a downed alien and bring its hand to her face. Isabelle did the same to another creature, surprising Royce.

"What are you doing?" He asked as she frowned and moved on to another alien.

"We're seeing which ones are still alive. We need to help them." She said and a few of the braver gray skinned creatures had begun to do the same.

"We really don't have time for this." He said, glancing back and appraising the door. She looked up at him with the same look she had given him when he suggested they booby trap that douche Edwin.

"No. No we don't," she said slowly, "but I just can't leave them here."

"Is..." He started.

"If you're not going to help you should leave." She gravitated to another.

Anger washed over him as conflicting ideologies from his past vied for position in his head. The mercenary he had become told him to cut his losses and follow the walking wounded out of here. The marine sergeant he used to be screamed at him to leave no one behind. They didn't owe these aliens anything and soon something bad would pound its way through the door. He didn't care about the marine he once was or the merc he had become. What he did care about was her and he was damned if her was going to leave here without her.

"No." He venomously and she turned to face him.

"No what?" She said cautiously as she recognized the anger in his voice.

"I don't know what that thing did to you, but they are not you're problem."

"They didn't..." She began but he cut her off.

"We need to leave right now and I am not leaving here without you even if I have to drag you out of here by your pretty hair." He stepped towards her do just that when a bat hit him in the back of the head, at least it felt like a bat. The edges of the room got fuzzy and a high pitched whine filled his ears. His legs suddenly felt like rubber and his back felt hot. His rubbery legs gave and he fell. As he fell, behind the whine, he heard shouts and gun fire. His knees hit the stone and he wondered blearily if she would forgive him. Then his head hit the ground and darkness canceled out the whine and the pain in his back.

Royce opened his eyes and found himself standing in a forest clearing. Birds chirped merrily and the sun streaked through the leaves. _I'm dead,_ he thought.

_Hardly._

Royce jerked his head up at the sound and was confused to see a man meditating, closed eyed, on a rock that wasn't there seconds ago. He instinctively reached for his weapon but found it gone. He did however find he was wearing a white button up shirt and khakis, he hated khakis.

"What the hell's going on? Who the hell are you?" Royce said and advanced angrily to the man. The man cracked one eye open and Royce froze in his tracks. A sudden paralyzing fear sizzled down his spine. The man opened both of his eyes, scratched the head of a snake that wrapped around his shoulders and the fear was suddenly gone. Something about him seemed familiar to Royce, though he couldn't quite place it.

The man uncurled from his sitting position and stood with a stretch.

_ Let's walk._ He said with unmoving lips, his voice bouncing around the inside of Royce's head. He paused in front of a tree lined path that emerged from the surrounding forest and looked back, before beginning to walk. Royce followed, uncharacteristically docile, but after few silent steps Royce found his courage to ask.

"Where are we going?"

The man took a few unhurried paces before answering. _There's something you need to see._

Royce shrugged at his response and decided that he must be hallucinating again. He had a few more questions for the man, but the way his answers bounced around in his brain was unnerving. The man's voice had an eerily familiar cadence and timbre to it.

"You sound like my grandfather." He blurted out, when his mind suddenly made the connection. The man walking before him did not even remotely look like his grandfather, but definitely sounded like his long dead grandfather.

The man glanced at him and slowed his steps until they were walking side by side. _Do I? Your grandfather was important to you then._

The forest around them began to darken as if dusk was approaching. Off in the distance Royce heard the unmistakable sound of gun fire and he glanced nervously around. The sound became louder and he crouched down beside a tree, trying to determine where the noise came from. The man turned back to him, out in plain view and cocked his head at him.

"Are you crazy? Get down." Royce said over the rattle of a machine gun.

_Nothing will hurt you here. This is just your life._

_ "_What?" Royce sighed exasperated; he was starting to get a headache.

Violence_ will follow you __everywhere__, I'm afraid. It's you lot in this life._ The voice of the man rattled around in his head almost sadly. _Come, we are almost there._ He finished and turned back in the direction he was originally headed.

Royce rubbed at his temples, his headache in full swing now. The sound of war had faded off into the distance. He stood carefully, looking for signs of an impending fight and finally followed the bewildering man.

They emerged from the trees at the base of a cliff and the universe spiraled out in front of them. Worlds vast and small circle each other. Royce could see the Earth, the sun, Mars, the Orion belt, the edge of the universe and the middle all at the same time. He felt himself begin to fall and was helpless to stop it. The man grabbed his arm and swung him around away from the churning mass.

_Careful. You know what is said about staring into the void too long. _The voice, so much like his grandfather's, grounded him.

"It stares back at you." He said weakly and faced the trees again. The path they had emerged from had somehow become two.

"Which one do we go down?" Royce asked the man.

_That is the question._

Royce frowned at the man's answer and studied the two paths. One looked familiar and well worn and downhill, but it was full of ugly thorns and darkness. The other path was up hill, rocky and overgrown with green bushes and streaked with sunlight. The man came to stand beside him.

"I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost." Royce mumbled the quote and continued to stare down the paths.

_You will have to make a choice soon, but as Dante had a guide, so do you. _Royce felt a heavy hand on his shoulder then felt an odd tugging sensation at his stomach towards the darker path. The sensation got stronger and stronger until he felt like he was being pulled at a hundred miles an hour. His vision began to tunnel and he was scared he wouldn't stop. The pulling stopped suddenly and he came to a halt in a shabby dark room. He knew he wasn't really in the room he was like the camera circling the room. He was the unseen dreamer in a dream, an audience for his own future.

Royce saw himself lying cold on a lumpy mattress in the corner of the dirty mud brick room. Moans of the injured bounced around the room. Gunfire and bomb blasts occasionally shook the mud from the walls. He watched as men walked in caring other wounded in stretchers. Men! He was going to get home somehow. The thought did not warm him as much as he thought it should. The future Royce shivered under the thin blanket and grimaced from the pain it induced. A man in blood spattered white coat walked over to him, a thin metal chart in his hands.

"You're lucky." The man started without greeting. "We managed to save your arm and you'll be headed home soon."

"Nothin," The other Royce began and stopped as the building shook again from another blast. "Nothin worth going back for. Just patch me up and send me back out." He finished and looked away. The man in the lab coat shook his head sadly and walked away. The dreaming Royce felt the weight of the words coming from his own mouth in his chest. His future self looked up and he could see the cold eyes of a man longing for death. He felt a tug on his back and he was pulled quickly back to the crossroads.

It felt like the breath was knocked out of him as soon as he arrived and he had to bend over with his hands on his knees until he was able to talk.

"Was that my future?" He said to the man who had let go of his shoulder and had taken a step away from him...

_It is a Sunday morning._

The man said and stepped back to him when Royce stood upright.

"Wait..." Royce began, but was cut off as the man's hand fell to his shoulder and he felt the familiar tug. This journey seemed to flyby even faster than the last and soon he came to a halt in front of a familiar lake beach.

A man laid bleeding and moaning on the sand by his future self's feet. He kicked away the revolver on the ground and held his own rifle steadily on him.

"Stop complaining it's just your arm. We can probably save it." He heard himself say.

A twig snapped behind him and he called out, "Nice Shot.", without looking away from the injured man.

"Of course it was."

Both Royce's smiled at Isabelle's indigent reply and they turned to see her quirk an eyebrow at him. Royce began to feel the tug at his back again and he fought to remain here for a little longer.

She held her sniper rifle in her hands and her hair was pulled up in an unruly ponytail, like always. Her yellow sundress fluttered around her knees and she looked down.

The tugging was becoming stronger now and it felt like he was holding on the edge of a building by his fingertips.

"What are you doing here?" Her voice a mixture of concern and anger.

He looked down and saw a small face look up at her from around her legs. The face held eyes like his own.

Royce's fingers gave and he was pulled roughly away from the scene. His knees buckled when he returned to the crossroads and he fell to the ground. It took him a few moments to get his breath.

"Another Sunday?" He asked the man who stood nearby and stood up.

_Same Sunday. Just a different kind._

The man walked by him and made a sweeping gesture with his hand between the two paths. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited for Royce to choose. Royce stood for a second and eyed both paths, understanding what they really meant. The well worn down hill path where he was alone or the bumpy uphill one where he wasn't alone.

"I'm not a good enough man to deserve that Sunday." He gestured towards the lighted path. The man glanced down the path then back at Royce.

_If you choose, you can spend the rest of your life and perhaps some __of the next, making sure __you are__ good enough for it._

Royce looked at the man and felt a smile tug on the corner of his mouth, he liked that idea. Decision made, he stepped towards the lighted path and felt himself being pulled, different from before, gently backwards. He felt like the camera again, but one at the end of a movie, that watched the two heroes walk into the sunset. He watched his and the man's backs as they walked alongside each other down the path.

"Some of the next? What like reincarnation?" He heard himself ask from a distance.

"_Yes. Everyone dies, it's the in between that matters._" The man's voice had begun to have a more terrestrial feel and no longer echoed in his head.

The camera he was begun to raise above the trees as men continued their conversation.

"I don't believe in reincarnation." Royce's voice was quieting and the world was fading to black.

"_I know._"

The scene was now completely black and silent. Then, after a beat. "Will she be there?"

"_Of course. Of __course._"


	13. Finding Durga

1. Well what do you know? I still alive! Sorry about the wait. 2. Isabelle's point of view. Oh, how I've missed you Isabelle. 3. Review please.

**Survival Skills: Finding Durga**

Isabelle felt the heat and the impact of the door exploding, but was unhurt by it. Royce's body accidentally protected her from most of the flying debris. Cover fire exploded from the rifle in her hand more out of instinct than out of will. From the corner if her eyes she caught Lilith dragging Royce behind a fallen canister. Isabelle ducked behind an adjacent canister and reloaded. Seconds crawled by in the ensuing silence as each opposing faction assessed the situation. She looked over at her two allies in the short cease fire and wished she hadn't. Fear clawed at her guts as she saw Royce sprawled unmoving on the floor with a hard breathing Lilith ducked over him.

"How is he?" She asked Lilith, slipping easily into the strange new language.

"Alive." Came Lilith's simple, but meaningful reply. The canister Isabelle hid behind was suddenly pelted by plasma fire, sending sparks flying. She returned fire and took her chances with a running duck to where the two injured lay. She slammed heavily against the protective canister just as more plasma rounds sizzled overhead. She handed Lilith the bow and untangled the plasma rifle from Royce's limp form. She didn't look at him anymore than she had to. She was pissed off and scared enough as it was and she couldn't afford to make any mistakes.

Lilith notched the arrow she had slid out of the quiver on Isabelle's side and dared to peak out over the side of the canister for a moment.

"I do not see anything, but I believe there is only one." She said as she ducked back down.

"Small favors." Isabelle replied and glanced around looking for anything that would give them an advantage. She spotted movement behind them and made eye contact with one of the gray skinned aliens who had not managed to escape yet. Lilith followed her eye line and saw the creature as well.

"They are not cowards. They will help." She said.

"Good, we could use the help." Isabelle said and motioned the creature closer. The creature began to crawl shakily towards them and she turned laying down another round of cover fire this time with Royce's plasma rifle. Lilith took the opportunity to half fly half jump up to the next level and find cover. Once the scrawny creature was close enough Isabelle grabbed its hand and put it to her face, hoping she would not get shot in the back while she was distracted.

She wasn't sure if the initial shocking brain melt from that first creature had dulled her senses or if the others were not as strongly psychic, but touching their minds didn't hurt. It was still uncomfortable, but was more like a whispered show and tell of still images instead of a full blown movie in her head. She relayed as best as she could of what she need him to do and removed his hand from her face. The creature nodded something it must have dug out of her head, as a sign of assent and began to drag the injured Royce away. She sprayed the entrance with more plasma to give cover to the creature. She turned her back against the canister and ducked her head as sparks flew from the return fire. In the distance, she spotted more of the creatures helping to drag the unconscious Royce away and she was glad that at least he would be okay. She looked sharply to her side as a blinking object slid clatteringly a meter beside her on the ground.

"Filho da Punta." She muttered urgently even as she stood to run, daring plasma shots to the back. She didn't have the first clue as to what the object was, but she was versed enough in tactics to guess about what it did. First thing you do to a dug in enemy is burn them out. She would have done it if she had the ability. There was no explosion, just a bright flash of light and shock wave that sent loose canisters, limp aliens and Isabelle flying.

She hit her forehead on the side of a canister and for a moment teetered on the edge of darkness as she slid to the floor. She rolled to her back and tried to make her eyes her focus and her ears to stop ringing. She felt warm liquid dribble down her face from her forehead and her arm throb under the cast. She angled her head up and focused on a hunter blur into sight and walk almost cockily to her.

It must have thought she was no longer a threat. _Prick_, she thought. However, after a quick inventory she found out he was right. The plasma rifle had been wrenched from her hands from the explosion. The lever action still lay were she dropped it in favor of fire power and her trusty sniper rifle must of slipped off, because she could no longer feel it's weight on her back. The only thing that could be considered a weapon was a single arrow that had managed to remain in her quiver. A moment of panic seized her and she began to crab walk unseeingly backward.

The large hunter strode forward and grabbed her neck picking her off the ground effortlessly. Her hands went around the creature forearm as it held her up until they were face to face. She saw her own reflection in the overly polished mask it wore. Blood ran down her face from the wound on her fore head. Her eyes were ablaze with anger and an unworldly confidence. She barely recognized the strange creature in the reflection and wondered where it had come from. It was like looking at a comic book superhero version of herself, fearless and powerful. She saw her reflection smirk and she knew this thing suddenly didn't stand a chance. She kicked at the hunter's midsection, landing a few good hits and grabbed the arrow at her side.

The hunter deflected another blow from her legs just in time to receive an arrow into the meat where shoulder meets neck. The hunter yelped in pain and reached at the offending weapon, dropping her to the ground.

Isabelle took a much needed breath of air as she landed ungracefully on the ground and got her footing as the hunter tore the arrow from its flesh. She used her slight stature to her advantage and quickly slid around its legs. She kicked at the hunter's knees, but it quickly adjusted sending a staggering back hand across her face. Stars exploded in her eyes and she fell backward on the cold ground. The hunter charged up his shoulder mounted weapon as she shook off her dazed state. She was surprised to see an arrow suddenly ebbed itself into the hunter's neck and she quickly rolled out of the way of the wayward plasma shot that slammed into the ground a second later.

She saw Lilith drop the now useless bow and pick up the trident at her side. The hunter rounded on her, pulling out yet another arrow from its neck. A glint caught Isabelle's eye and she almost let out a yell of triumph when she spotted her sniper rifle nearby. She scrambled for it and heard another plasma round go off behind her. She slid like a baseball player next to the rifle, chambered a round and leveled it at the hunter in one smooth motion. She had a brief feeling of déjà vu as she was now in a similar position to when Royce was battling with the hunter he had earned his bone jawed mask from. She didn't have drugs in her system this time though. Her bullet blasted through the unarmored place where she hoped the heart was. The polished masked hunter lurched forward at the shot and waivered on its feet before dropping down to its knees. It fell to its back reviling Lilith's trident sticking out of its chest. Isabelle cursed as she saw the trident rise and fall in a stuttering rhythm.

Why were these things so hard to kill?

She quickly jumped to her feet, ignoring the throb in her head, as she saw the hunter reach for the bracer on its arm. The last thing they needed was reinforcements called on them. She kicked away the offending hand.

"Lilith? You okay?" She called out as she scanned prone hunter, wondering where she was going to have to shoot in order to kill this thing. She could hear it struggling to breathe, as it lay with a bullet hole and trident in its chest. She stepped on its hand when it haphazardly reached for the bracer again, amazed at how little strength it seemed to have.  
"Lilith?" She asked again when she received no reply. Silence followed and knew she was not going to get an answer. She gritted her teeth in anger. This thing didn't deserve a bullet. She flung her rifle strap around her neck, wrenched out the trident from the hunter's chest and plunged it into its neck. Its anatomy may not be the same as a human's, but its brain still needed blood and she intended to stop the flow to it. She pulled the trident out and plunged it back into the hunter's neck two more times before she was satisfied it was dead.

She leaned, panting, on the trident after the final blow as it still ebbed in its neck. She knew if she could see herself now she would not see some perfected version of a hero. She'd just see an exhausted, dirty and bloodied woman, wondering what was to come next. Around her, gray skinned aliens began to emerge from their hiding spaces. She pushed off the trident and grimly turned to where she had last seen Lilith.

She stumbled to where she saw the she-creature's bird-like legs emerge from behind a fallen canister. At first she didn't see what was wrong, but as she moved the dark hair from Lilith's face she understood. Her eyes clouded with tears and a lump formed in her throat when she saw metal debris jutting from the side of her face and neck. The hunter seemed to have gotten a lucky shot in the canister, sending deadly shrapnel flying and now Isabelle's ally was dead. She slid to her knees next to her, her rifle slipping off her shoulder to the side and she picked up the other woman's lifeless hand. Tears she wasn't aware she was shedding mingled with the blood on her face. This wasn't just an ally lying dead at her feet, this was a friend. Anger mingled with sadness and she promised herself she would kill every last hunter if it was the last thing she did.

She felt rather than saw the aliens as they begin to crowd around her, reminding her that now was not the time to mourn. She dropped Lilith's hand and stood suddenly. The aliens collectively stepped back as she studied them, steely determination glittering in her brown eyes.

She pushed past the bewildered creatures to where the hunter lay and savagely ripped out the trident from its neck. She looted the hunter of its mask and bracer and anything else she thought might come in handy. She gathered up the rest of her weapons and began to scavenge what she could out of the bag that had been on Royce's back before the explosion. As she looked through the tattered remains she wondered how he was still alive. One of the larger, seemingly braver given her current mood, creatures came up to her and held its hand out towards her.

"What?" She asked tersely and the creature gestured to her face. She sighed and stepped into its waiting hand.

She stepped back once all the pictures stopped. She wiped the blood from her forehead shoved the trident into his hands. They may not be warriors, but they were efficient. They had found a functional escape lift and were in the process of getting all the water diverted out of the tube it was hiding in. She glanced back to the rubble that filled the only other way out and back down to where Lilith lay. She briefly thought about taking her body with her, but decided against it. Staying alive would be difficult enough without hauling around a dead body. She willed away the brief spurt of guilt of leaving her here and began to pile supplies into the arms of the alien still standing before her. She turned to where the others were waiting and began to mentally preparing herself for what she might find.

* * *

Isabelle sat on the ground and had Royce's head in her lap when he startled awake a few hours later. She put his hand on his chest to still him.

"Careful, you got banged up pretty good."

"Wha...ow." He cringed and put his hand up to his head. "What happened?'

"You were right about that door not lasting. Good thing you had that bag on your back or we wouldn't be having this conversation." Her eyes wandered off to the surrounding trees. "Lilith's dead."

He dropped his hand from his head to his side and looked up at her. "I'm sorry."

She glanced back down for a moment before her eyes returned to the trees and nodded at his statement. A few of the gray skinned aliens milled about in the clearing of the woods they were resting in.

It had taken the aliens a little while to clear the water from the tube, filling the lower level of the cavern almost up to her ankles. She sunlight had stung her eyes when the mechanical device grinded them up out of the darkness of the cavern. She shielded her eyes and noted they were they only about half way up the side of the mountain staircase. Supplies were passed out and soon the creatures began to lumber off in a single purposeful direction. She hesitated to follow for a moment before the large creature from earlier once again held his hand up to her. Soon after, the two of them carried Royce along behind the convoy of aliens. The exhausted caravan of aliens came to a halt in the clearing they were now in about an hour later.

"Where are my pants?" He asked suddenly and she looked down to see him angle his head up so he could look the wraps that now coverer his legs up to his thighs.

"We had to take them off to wrap up the burns on your legs, but they were pretty torn up to begin with." She bent over him and slid over a bag of supplies she had claimed. She pulled out a pale blue robe and handed it to him.

"Here. It's the best I could do." She said with a shrug and he sat up slowly.

He eyed the fabric warily. "No way am I gonna wear this. It looks like a dress."

She looked over at him, amusement slowly filling her eyes.

"I certainly don't mind if you walk around in your underwear, but you're starting to draw the attention from what I think are females." She gestured to where a few yellow robed aliens stood. They looked away as he glanced in their direction.

"Seriously?" He said dryly and draped the fabric across his lap. She shrugged again and bit back a smile. He slowly stood, mindful of his wounded legs. He wrapped the robe around his legs and left the upper half dangling behind him, leaving his chest bare. She thought he looked like some kind of wild Scotsman. He put his hands on his waist and surveyed the scene.

"Alright, just how long have I been out of it?" He said and began to sit down again.

"Just a few hours." She waited until he was fully seated before continuing. "They had supplies stashed away down there. I guess if you're going to rebuild a society you'll need a few things. They not much in a fight, but they are pretty good at everything else. One of them helped me carry you out and they gave me some ointment for your legs."

"It's good stuff. My legs don't hurt." He said, absently rubbing the top of his thigh.

"I'm surprised. It's first, maybe some second degree, burns. I had to dig out some shrapnel too, which was extremely unpleasant by the way." She looked away.

She felt his fingers ghost across the new bruise on her cheek. "You okay?"

"No." She sighed and pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ears. "I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm frustrated, I'm tired and I'm sick of getting hit in the face."

"Yeah, I wish that would stop too."

She paused at the sincerity in his words and they looked at each other silently for a moment.

"What happened down there?" He said quietly.

She rolled her neck and took a breath. She launched into an abbreviated version of events down in the bowels of the mountain. When she finished she saw a small smile on his face.

"What?"

"Nothin." He shook his head and nudged her with his shoulder. "Ya done good, that's all."

She rolled her eyes and looked away, a small smile creeping on her face at his complement.

A red robed alien came to stand a discreet distance away and raised one hand raised towards them. She sighed with a frowned.

"He wants to tell me something."

"How can you tell?" He asked, eyeing the creature suspiciously.

"They raise their hand like that when they want to talk. It's apparently rude to force your thoughts into someone without permission."

"But isn't that the guy that grabbed you earlier and forced his thoughts into you?" He said with an edge in his voice as her recognized the creature.

"Yeah, well, extenuating circumstances, I suppose." She shrugged. "Anyway, Moses here seems to be the leader and he seems to know where he is going. So, I should see what he wants"

"Moses?"

"They don't use words so they don't really have names and since Lilith was sort of a distance cousin to them, I decided stick with the theme. I'll be right back." She walked over, took a breath and leaned into Moses outstretched hand. Perhaps waking up disoriented and confused caused him to be less than gentle on her brain this morning or maybe he just had a lot to say. Either way, he got his point across much gentler than last time. No nose bleeds or splitting headaches this time around for her. After the exchange Isabelle walked back to Royce with a frown.

"What now?" He stood up as she approached.

"They're pissed." She said, as if that would explain it all.

He made a motion for her to continue.

"They want to help us kill the other hunters." She looked up and saw the surprised expression on his face. "Yeah, that's what I thought. What do you say we get out of here before they do anything stupid?"

She knelt down in front of the bag and began to rummage through it. He crossed his arms and watched her for a second.

"This morning you were hell bent on protecting them and now you're willing to ditch them. What happened?" He said.

"I still want to protect them, but look at them." She gestured around to the exhausted creatures. "Most of them can barely walk. They have no weapons and zero combat ability. Alone they may not be worth hunting, but with us with them they are." She went back digging in the bag until she found what she was looking for and stood before him with the scavenged bracer in hand. "Moses knows where he is going and I have an idea. Actually it's your idea."

"Which one was that?"

"The hunters are hunting one of their own. I say we find him first."

"Enemy of my enemy?" He smirked. "Sound's great, except I don't have a clue where it might be."

"You found me after I fell down the side of a mountain. I would think that an alien with bright green blood should be easy."

"Not much of a plan."

"I did say I had a plan I said I had an idea. I'll leave the planning to you."

He sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. She studied him for a moment, well aware of his current state of injury.

"How are you feeling?"

"I'll be better once we're off this planet." He dropped his hand to her forehead and fluttered his fingers over the newly formed scab.

"If we do this we do it right. We have a plan. We get out alive." He said and let his hand drop.

"Agreed." She nodded and handed him the bracer.

"Help me put this on. The cast still makes fine motor skills, like tying knots, difficult." She raised the arm that still had the cast around it and if to prove her point, provided a less then successful wiggle of her fingers. He crinkled his brow for a moment and studied the bracer before kneeling down in front of her.

"This is the new one?" He asked as he maneuvered her legs apart to get better access to her thigh. "What does the mask look like?"

She bent over at the waist, keeping her legs apart and dug out the mask out of the bag. The shiny mask held in front of his face dislodged the heated images her agility briefly inspired.

"That's really, really polished." He said and finished tying on the bracer with a slap to her leg.

"Yeah, the guy obviously had a huge ego problem." She looked at the masked and adjusted the bracer. He sat back down on the ground and watched as she dug through the bag again. The sun glinted off the mask as it dangled by her fingers, provoking a thought.

"Didn't happen to find mine did you?" He asked.

"Right here." She held up his, with a smile. He reached for it and turned it in his hand. She sat down cross legged beside him as he studied the mask.

"This thing has seen better days, hasn't it?" He rubbed some soot off with his thumb.

She glanced down at the beaten piece of alien technology in his hands, before returning her gaze to her own.

"You got blown up, you're lucky you still have a mask." She leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, suddenly very tired.

The image of his limp body down in the darkness of the cavern blinked, unwelcomed into her head. The large alien, she had begun to mentally Samson, had followed silently behind her after she stocked him with supplies and it took them quite a while before they found the others. The creatures seemed to be much more aware of their surroundings and were much more ordered then before. She spotted Royce up on the next tier up with the alien that had pulled him to safety hovering near by and had to climb to get to him. He was covered with a recently rediscovered blanket up to his neck. He looked so ashen and still that for a moment she knew he was dead. She kneeled down next to him slowly, the edges of vision beginning to crumble. Her hand went to his chest and she felt the reassuring rhythmic up and down motion of her hand on his chest as he breathed.

She felt him shift under her head and she blinked away the dark images. His heavy arm drape around her waist and she heard him sigh.

"So what's your plan?" She smiled as she felt his nose nuzzle her hair.

"We just came up with the idea about five minutes ago. What makes you think I have a plan?"

She angled her head back and arched an eyebrow at him. He shook his head and looked away.

"Think you're so smart?" He sighed. "Well it just happens that I do have a plan, but I don't like it."

"Tell me anyway."

So he did and by the end of it she knew was going to have to find the superhero reflected in the hunter's mask again if they were going to stand a chance.

.


	14. Divinity that Shapes Our Ends

Note: 1. Royce and Isabelle have never left me. They've been hounding me every few weeks for me to finish their story. I keep telling them to just tell me what happens next and I'll be sure to write it down. Then after many, many, months they finally did. 2. Watch out for the epilogue.

**Survival Skills: Divinity that Shapes our End**

Moses gathered his flock and Royce gathered their supplies, ready to slip into the shadows in the wake of the jumbled exodus that would follow. Isabelle enlisted the aid of the grey skinned creature that helped her drag Royce out of the center of the world. They would need help if the two lone humans on this planet were going to be able to succeed in their plan, though they both were loath to admit it.

Royce watched from the edge of the woods as she approached the creature still holding the Lilith's trident. She held her hand up to him and after he cocked his head in confusion for a second stepped into it. After a few short seconds he watched as they separated. The creature nodded once at her, his long fingered hand gripping the trident and strode off to where Royce stood. She brought her hand up to her head and Royce could see the strain in her eyes, which only strengthened his eagerness to leave.

The trio easily broke away from the group and made their way slowly to the crack in the steps to climb down to the bottom massive pyramid-like structure. They decided to forgo the use of the cloaking devices they had for the moment. It was easier to keep up with each other if they could see each other, especially with the new addition trailing them. It was also better to keep that certain trick hidden well up their sleeve if indeed they were already being actively hunted. The plan was to double back to the crash site, track down that ship's, hopefully, still alive hunter and persuade the fallen pilot to help them hijack it's rival's ship still cloaked somewhere. Royce hated it. Too many things could go wrong, but he was at a loss at what else to do. They had one chance at getting off this planet.

They reached the bottom the steps and the two humans pressed their backs to the cool stone wall to catch their breath. Their new ally stared off into the woods seemingly unfazed by their long climb.

"Ya know, for a guy that was floating in coolant for years, he's pretty spry." Royce said as he passed over his canteen to Isabelle. She took a gulp of water before responding.

"The pods were programmed with a system to help prevent muscle atrophy. I think maybe his malfunctioned and he got too much." She said as she passed back the canteen. She waved vaguely between her head and the alien when she saw questioning looked. "I've gotten a lot of information from them."

"You okay?" He narrowed his eyes to study her. She smiled tiredly as she looked over at him. "I'm fine, just a little head ache."

He searched her face for a few seconds then satisfied with her response, nodded and looked back at the increasingly impatient creature. "I think we should call him Samson."

He turned back to her with a crooked smile that made her chest squeeze. "I do like motifs."

* * *

They paused in the tree line and surveyed the area of the downed craft Royce found earlier, Isabelle with her scope and Royce with his naked eye. Neither Isabelle nor Royce were sure of what they would find there, but it was a place to start. Isabelle was about to give the all clear when she felt a long fingered hand on her temple and the familiar itching sensation in her brain before images flowed in. She blinked as Samson removed his hand and she looked up to see what he saw. She wondered how she missed it.

"Up there. Pass those trees, on that big branch." She whispered to Royce and trained her scope to the location. "Do you see it?"

"Yeah."

The form of a hunter lay half hidden in the canopy, uncloaked and unmoving.

"I don't see any gear on him, no bracer or mask. He's just laying up there." She zoomed in. "He is breathing, so he's not dead.

"He wasn't there yesterday or he would have tried to off me." Royce thought for a moment. "Must've circled back or he had an escape pod land somewhere else. Doesn't matter, we need…" He cut off as the hunter suddenly snapped his head down. The humans tensed as they saw what had caught the hunter's attention. Samson walked slowly under the hunter, trident pointed down and arms spread. Isabelle glanced over at Royce who sat tight lipped watching the scene unfold.

Samson stabbed the trident upright in the ground and stepped cautiously closer. The hunter in the tree cocked its head at the unfamiliar creature walking up unarmed. The hunter scanned the area before easing its large frame down to the ground. Neon green blood oozed freely from a gnash on his side and Isabelle noticed he favored his left leg as he strode up menacingly up to Samson.

The hunter lashed out and grabbed Samson by the throat, lifting his slight frame off the ground. Isabelle had a shot lined up at the hunter's head before Royce placed a heavy hand on her sight and whispered for her to wait.

The hunter tilted the smaller creature's head painfully from side to side as if inspecting it, before he dropped him back to ground and walked dismissively to the trident. The massive alien bent down to grip the trident near the base as Samson, in a surprising amount of swiftness, struck out and brushed his fingertips across the side of the hunters face.

The two aliens froze and Royce, having seen the effects of that touch, stood free from the foliage and Isabelle's warning hand. He quickly made his way into the scene; weapon raised and kicked the trident away from the dazed hunter's hand. Isabelle kept her weapon trained on the hunter from the cover of the bushes. They waited for Samson to finish his "conversation".

The two creatures bent over the soggy ground began to quiver and Isabelle was sure that there was some sort of epic unseen battle going on between the two. As suddenly as the episode started, it stopped when Samson removed his hand. The hunter collapsed into the mud and Samson leaned heavily on a tree, both creatures breathing hard. Isabelle and Royce waited tensely to see what would happen next.

The hunter pushed away from the ground and stood, still slightly shaking. When it spied Royce standing before him with his weapon raised, it began a cacophony of clicks and hisses that was familiar and dreaded to the humans who heard it. The mini standoff was broken as Samson pushed away from the tree. The two killers glanced quickly over at his slim figure, then back to each other. Isabelle wished for a second that she was close enough to see what Royce saw, because he must have seen something in the hunter that made him nod his head, lower his weapon slightly and step back.

Samson sighed half in relief half exhaustion and walked around them towards where Isabelle still hid. Royce kept his eyes on the hunter who had placed a fortifying hand on the wound on its side.

"Is?"

"Yeah?" Came her reply and the hunter spun his head around to the sound.

"I think we just made a truce."

"That was easier than I thought it would be." She said and stood from the foliage with her rifle lowered, knowing her cover was blown.

"Me too. Can you go ahead and make sure?" He said and it took a second for her to understand what he meant.

"I'm on it." She nodded and looked over at Samson, who just stumbled over to the bag of supplies. She caught his attention and made the hand gesture that she wanted to 'talk'. His fingers touched her temple and a minute later, as she braced one hand on the tree beside her and tried to breathe the pounding in her head away, she knew more than she ever wanted to know.

Samson passed her the canteen as she tried to gather herself. He tilted his head as is examining her before he bent to the bag of supplies and pulled out some cloth and Royce's salve. Isabelle poured water onto the back of her neck in an effort to clear her head before following numbly behind Samson as he strode away. She heard the rumble of Royce's voice and saw Samson bend to examine the hunter's side, but it seemed distanced somehow. Her brain was having trouble processing all the information she was given. She felt Royce nudge her arm.

"He'll help us. He wants off this planet too." She belatedly answered his rumbled question. There were somethings humans shouldn't know. She heard him rumble again and she tried to focus on that instead of the second hand nightmare memories of a greater race.

"I am?" She questioned unmoving, even as she felt the blood Royce noted trickle from her nose.

"Is, look at me." She heard him demand and she tried to find his eyes, but instead all she saw were horrible flashes of the hunter's memory. Slick black creatures hissing from their gaping drooling maw, horrible clacking languages coming from squat clawed beings with thin membranous wings and chaotically angled buildings, all jostled for her attention.

Royce glanced over at the creatures, the smaller tending to the larger one's wound, and back to the woman beside him. Something was wrong with her, that much was obvious from the faraway look in her eyes and the increase in breath. For the first time in a while he was unsure what to do. Training told him not to turn away from a possible threat, while his guts told him to screw training for a second and help the woman who was becoming an integral part of his life. When he saw tears roll from her terror stricken eyes, guts won out. He cradled his weapon in his elbow and raised his right hand up to her face forcing her to turn to him. Her eyes were still focused somewhere far away

"IS." Nothing.

"Isabelle." He tried again.

She startled and blinked up at him. "Royce?"

"Jesus. What's happening?" He asked, concern lacing his voice even as he unthinkingly wiped the blood from her face with his palm. The motion caused her own hand to touch the drying blood with a blink. She shook her head and looked down.

"I can't…too much…" She started only to suddenly look up at him and death grip his raised forearm with both of her hands. "I don't know how much more I can take. Aliens, being prey, languages, something else's memories. I don't… take me home Royce." She pleaded.

He didn't know what she was talking about but he heard the panic in her voice, saw it swelling in her eyes and knew he needed to something before she went completely around the bend. He looked back over at the duo still seemingly unconcerned about the little drama playing out in front of them and bent closer to her.

"Okay." He said quietly into her ear pressing his check to hers, while keeping an eye on their new allies.

"You remember I told you about my place by Canyon Lake?" He felt her nod on his cheek a second later. "Well, there's a great claw foot tub in the bathroom. Perfect for a hot bath. We'll get in until our fingers are purney." He felt her hands ease from their death grip, one even wondering up to his neck. He wasn't sure why he was telling her this, but it seemed to be calming her. "There's a 60 inch TV down stairs and we'll watch football and talk about the news and what we did that day."

Isabelle began to translate the rumble of his voice into real time as she focused on it. No sudden moves, she thought to herself. She pushed back away from his face slowly and saw the worry in his eyes.

"Better?" He asked. She responded with a broken smile. Royce relaxed for a second only to tighten again and jerk his attention to the shadow suddenly looming over them. The hunter clacked its strange language and put a hand out palm up.

"What?" Royce said angrily.

Isabelle unhooked her mask from her side and placed it in the outstretched hand. Royce wrinkled his brow.

"What are you doing?" He asked her as she bent down and began untying the bracer strapped to her leg.

"He knows how to use this thing better than I do and he needs the mask. They can't breathe the air here for too long."

It took Royce barely a second to better understand her partial break down from a few seconds ago. "Shit." He mumbled, then "What else did he show you?"

Her fingers faltered a second. "More than I wanted to know."

She stood and handed the bracer over to the waiting hunter. She looked over at Royce and saw the worry again in his eyes.

"You gonna be okay?"

She shrugged actively trying not to think and turned to watch the hunter put on the devices. "I don't know."

She felt Royce slide up to her and heard his grumbling voice next to her ear. "I can't promise we'll get home, but..." She looked up at him. "I promise like hell to try."

Her lips curled up and she thought about leaning up to kiss him.

A loud claxon from the bracer the hunter now controlled was the only warning they got before plasma shots fizzled by and burst the trees around them. They dove for cover uncertain just what direction the shot were coming from. Isabelle had her rifle raised to the trees, knowing that's how they preferred to hunt, with her back to another tree. Royce slammed beside her and scrambled to turn on the cloak.

"They like to hide in the trees." She said to him before he shimmered out of view and she felt the weight of him leave her side. A plasma shot exploded the bark of the tree behind her just where her head was a second before. Wood splinters scratched her face as she flinched and rolled away. Plasma shots blared from over her head towards the general direction where the first came from. She took the covering fire Royce was offering and slid feet first into a nearby ditch.

The sound of the shots began to gain some distance from her before they stopped. Isabelle took a breath and carefully raised her head from her make shift cover to scan the area. A blur of movement caught her eye as two hulking fighters fizzled in and out of her vision in some kind of epic hand to hand battle. She blinked away the foreign memories of honor and trophy killing as she lined up her scope on the two and waited for a clean shot. Their new ally may not like her taking his kill, but this wasn't about honor for her. It was about survival. The shot provided itself as the two suddenly parted from each other. She was squeezing the trigger just as she felt the rifle ripped from her hands and suddenly she was hurtling through the air. She hit a nearby tree and felt something snap and landed gasping in pain in the mud below.

Pulling her face from the mud she looked up and saw a hunter materialize in front of her. The mask it wore had horns sprouting from the sides making it look like a buffalo and for some reason that terrified her. She frantically scanned area looking for her missing weapon. She tasted blood in her mouth as the hunter leveled its shoulder mounted cannon down at her. She clawed at the ground trying to get away, wondering why her legs didn't want to work. Isabelle glanced back and saw why the buffalo masked beast before her paused its killing blow.

The forest around them shivered as the gray skinned creatures encircled the area. She painfully pushed her way to sit with her back to the tree as she watched the hunter spin in a circle and hiss menacingly at the newfound threat around him. She felt rage replace terror and knew it was not her own rage but that of the physic creatures around her. The hunter bellowed loudly as he too felt the anger of the others. The shoulder mounted cannon began to hum as he began to, one by one, vaporize the quickly advancing creatures. Isabelle scanned the area again for her lost weapon hoping to help in some way.

The hunter reared backwards as his mount suddenly blew up on his shoulder. The hunter screamed in pain and spun around towards the direction the shot came from. The creatures surrounding him took the opportunity and swarmed him. Some came with stone, some with rocks, most just used their bare hands to meet out the punishment of an entire race on him.

Isabelle caught the familiar silhouette of Royce outlined in the sun as he lowered his weapon and stumbled towards her. To her horror she saw blood staining his new robe and a gory mess on his side that he tried to cover with his hand.

"Royce?" She said, the final death throes of the buffalo masked hunter echoed off in the distance somewhere, she didn't care.

"You okay?" He asked. She wasn't, but she nodded at him anyway even as she felt her insides fill with blood. "Good." He swayed once and fell to the ground in front of her.

"Royce!" Panic filled her insides along with the blood. _No, no, no. They both couldn't die, not here. I wasn't fair_. She grunted past the pain and dragged her broken pain wracked body over to him.

He lay unmoving staring up at the trees, but turned his head at her when she crawled up and put her hand over the hole in his side.

"You're not okay, are you?" He said even as a little bit of blood trickled from his mouth.

"No. I'm not." Her hands were shaking, it was getting hard to breath and her damn legs still didn't want to work. She fumbled in her cargo pockets for the quick-clot, only to realize that must have fallen out at some point. Tears of pain, anger and fear rolled from her eyes.

"Stop that." He said weakly as he tried to raise his hand to her face only to have it fall again. She ducked down so he wouldn't see the tears and laid her head on his shoulder. Her hand lay numbly on top of his, neither doing much to staunch the flow of blood.

She felt him turn his head. "Guess we didn't lose them."

She shifted her head and tried to focus on the grey creatures as they began to drift away from the mangled body of the hunter and fall into each other's arms.

"Guess not." Came her quite reply. "What about the other hunter?"

He shrugged in answer. This almost seemed right to her somehow, her head lying in the familiar hollow of his shoulder, talking. Except. Except, her vision was fuzzy and his heart beat was slowing beneath her ear.

"Talk to me."

"Why?" Came his soft reply. She shifted her head again to look at him. He stared up unseeing into the trees. She slid her hand away from his side and numbly, awkwardly pushed his face to meet hers.

"Because I need to know you're still with me." Her fingers slid limply down to his neck. She left smear of blood on his chin and she couldn't take her eyes away from it.

"Don't worry were not gonna die here. I already choose. 824 Canyon Lake Drive. You're gonna like it, I'll meet you there."

"What?" She looked up at his odd reply and saw him close his eyes. "Royce? Royce!" Fear gave her the strength to shake him and when that didn't work, it gave her the strength to crawl up and whisper through the tears into his ear. "I love you."

The cool wind blew the leaves around them and the smell of blood wafted away for a moment leaving a faint smell of lilacs. An alien sun drenched the two humans, wrapped into each other bleeding and close to death, with its light.

She never quite imagined she would die like this and she certainly never thought she would welcome it. Well, almost welcome it. A small part of her still rallied to keep her eyes open and watch her fingers slowly move up and down from the pulse in his neck for as long as she could. Which was why when a shadow crossed over them, she was able to crack her eyes open a little more and see Samson look down at them and then glance up at something behind her. The terrible familiar sound of a hunter's rattle was the last thing she heard, before pain wracked her body, then nothing.

No. Not nothing. There were flashes of white and black, sterile and dirty smells, pain and numbness. And a voice, smiling and feminine.

_Not yet, Isabelle not yet._

She was floating, pain free, with the air rushing through her hair and in her ears.

Wait a minute. She wasn't floating, she was falling! Green canopies of trees rushed up to her greet her eyes as they flew open. Panic burst through her like a tidal wave, a yell escaped her mouth and her hand went up to where she feverently hopped straps to a parachute lay. Her fingers found a metal disc on her chest instead. A memory so distant that it almost seemed like a life time ago hit her. She suddenly felt like the bowl of petunias from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as she thought: Not again. Isabelle's burst of laughter continued as the chute on her back sprang open.


End file.
